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Don't get hemmed in by the Pittsburgh Marathon

Written by Jon Schmitz on .

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Sunday is the Pittsburgh Marathon, and you can bet your jogging shorts that traffic, parking and transit will be a jumble. Bear in mind that the closures start Friday to accommodate the Saturday events. Coming Downtown without doing some planning will invite potential misery. Here are two places where you can get all the details of what will be closed, detoured or just knocked out of its usual rut. Marathon street closures and parking info here. Transit info, including details of extra service that will run on the T and the busways here.

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Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald announced that JetBlue has added a fourth daily nonstop flight from Pittsburgh International Airport to Boston’s Logan International. The daily schedule now looks like this: Departures from PIT at 8:45 a.m., 11:10 a.m., 5:45 p.m. and 8:51 p.m.; departures from BOS at 6:25 a.m., 8:45 a.m., 3:34 p.m. and 6:10 p.m. Flight times generally a bit more than 90 minutes.

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Mr. Fitzgerald also made it known on Wednesday that the Port Authority is “looking at” putting a bike lane on the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway. This is a change of the authority’s previous “no way, no how” stance on busway biking. The exec acknowledged that it will be a challenge to find a way to do it safely. Parts of the busway have very little shoulder to work with.

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roadworkaheadLane closures are possible southbound on Freeport Road from Guys Run Road to the Hulton Bridge until 3 p.m. today.
 
Washington Road-Route 19 construction continues this weekend in Mt. Lebanon. Traffic will be limited to one lane in both directions between the Connor-Gilkeson road intersection and Cochran Road, and one lane northbound from Cochran to Alfred Street from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Monday.

Veterans Bridge inspection will cause lane and shoulder closures from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Wednesday.

The ramp from northbound Interstate 579-Crosstown Boulevard to Bigelow Boulevard will be closed around the clock from 8 a.m. Monday to 6 p.m. Friday for asphalt repairs and drainage work. The detour uses the Consol Energy Center-Centre Avenue ramp to a left on Washington Place to Bigelow.

A long-awaited project to reconstruct the intersection of Route 19 and Valley Brook Road in Peters will begin May 22. The $4.9 million project will realign and lengthen the ramp from Valley Brook Road to northbound Route 19. Valley Brook Road and Old Washington Road will have detours during the work, which is expected to continue through July 2014.

The eastbound off-ramp from Route 30 to Electric Avenue in North Braddock will close at 7 a.m. Friday and remain closed until 7 p.m. May 15 to accommodate the continuing bridge replacement project. The posted detour is to continue east on Route 30 to left on Mosside Boulevard-Route 48 to left on the Tri-Boro Expressway to Electric Avenue. The bridge project will be completed this fall.

Interstate 70 will close overnight in both directions at Jessop (Exit 16) in Washington County from May 13 to 18. During the closures, which start at 8 p.m., traffic will use off- and on-ramps to detour. The closures are necessary during placement of beams for the Sheffield Street Bridge. The highway reopens by 6 a.m.

Shoulder and lane restrictions will occur on I-70 between the Route 136-Beau Street interchange and the I-79 south junction nightly starting at 9 p.m. May 20 through June. Restrictions lift by 6 a.m. daily.

Lane closures are possible on South Braddock Avenue under the Parkway East bridge starting today. Removal of shielding under the bridge will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. for the next two weeks. No parkway restrictions are planned.

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They're rollin' at Homewood bike playground

Written by Diana Nelson Jones on .

 wheelmill
On a day like today, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to bicycle or do anything indoors, but there are all kinds of days and all kinds of bicyclists ... and now, there’s The Wheel Mill.
 
The indoor bike park opened on April 12, and mountain bikers, BMX racers and free-stylists are already flocking. It was Harry Geyer’s dream, the first indoor bicycling playground in the state, at 6815 Hamilton Ave., and one of not even a handful in the eastern part of this country. 
 
Harry, an aficionado who also owns a construction company, began wrestling the 80,000 square-foot former fabricating plant into shape with the help of hundreds of biking enthusiast volunteers over the past year. 
 
He said about 60 percent of the space is completed and that  crews will continue to build out with a goal of having both floors finished by September.
 
“We’ve had tons of people from all over the East Coast,” he said. “There’s a huge mountain biking community in Maryland and we’re getting people from there.”
 
wheelmillkidsThere aren't many indoor bicycling parks in the country but among them most close in the summer. The Wheel Mill will be open all summer.
 
The Wheel Mill got a loan of $150,000 from the Urban Redevelopment Authority, and Harry and his wife Sheila, devoted a chunk of their own money toward this venture.
 
The URA’s Rochelle Lilien, senior business development specialist, is quoted in the URA newsletter: “Harry was great to work with, and his vision and unique concept were refreshing. This is exactly the type of deal the URA loves to get involved in. We used our PBGF [Pittsburgh Business Growth Fund] loan funds to finance the gap to make this project work. The result was the re-use of a large vacant warehouse in Homewood, one of our targeted City neighborhoods, adding brand new life to the street!”
 
Harry said Saturday afternoons are the busiest time, “and anytime it’s raining.”
 
Photos by Brian Yeagle. Top: Mike Potoczny, a designer and building helper at the Wheel Mill, goes airborne at the Wheel Mill. Bottom: Nathan and Lucas Halahan

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Let's beat Brownie Town

Written by Diana Nelson Jones on .

bicyclists
The National Bike Challenge starts Wednesday and runs through the end of September, and this year, Pittsburgh bicyclists will try to defend our 2012 status as Rustbelt Champion.
 
During the next five months, people who sign up to contribute their logged miles can help the ‘burgh beat Brownie Town.
 
The National Bike Challenge is also a way for regular bicyclists to chart their miles each day, whether they cycle for exercise, for commute or both.. 
 
Bike Pittsburgh and Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe on the Southside are the local sponsors. Nationally, the sponsors are The League of American Bicyclists, Kimberly Clark and Endomondo.
 
You can sign up for the whole challenge or at any point therein here. Include your zip code to help Pittsburgh outride Cleveland.

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