Keystone Crossroads recently talked to Bike Pittsburgh Executive Director Scott Bricker about his trip to Copenhagen with Mayor Bill Peduto and County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.
In the segment Five Questions with…, Bricker explains how Copenhagen’s cycling infrastructure is incredibly bold and yet incredibly simple. He is impressed with the city’s, “clear paths where cyclists ride, where cars should drive, and pedestrians should walk.” He praises efforts to calm traffic, the low numbers of traffic injuries and the popularity of biking.
On the homefront, Bricker also calls for a change in how Pittsburgh traffic engineers view transportation.
“Moving cars quickly is still their raison d’être, it seems, with pedestrian and bicycle facilities falling far down their list of priorities,” he says. In his view, they’re not putting people first when designing streets.
A recent example of this, according to Bricker, is PennDOT’s redesign of Route 51-which could have been, “an amazing multimodal corridor with modern protected bikeways…” Instead, the chosen design will give too much space for cars and encourage unsafe driving behavior.
Read the full interview here.