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Amtrak has best month ever as ridership growth continues

Written by Jon Schmitz on .

Amtrak continues to enjoy record-setting ridership, including the single-best month ever in March.

This week, the railroad reported a nearly 1 percent ridership gain for the first six months of fiscal 2013 despite service disruptions from Superstorm Sandy. Twenty-six of 45 routes saw gains and Amtrak said it expects to finish the fiscal year at or above last year’s record ridership of 31.2 million.

There was good news for the Pennsylvanian, the route that had been in jeopardy before the state and Amtrak reached a subsidy agreement recently. Ridership was up 4.3 percent.

Incidentally, at a hearing before the Pennsylvania House Transportation Committee this week, PennDOT deputy secretary Toby Fauver, whose department agreed to pay $3.8 million to keep the Pennsylvanian running, said the subsidy amounts to $15 to $16 per passenger, and called the current fares “low,” saying they may have to be raised. Stay tuned.

The Harrisburg-Philadelphia-New York Keystone route had a 5.2 percent ridership gain for the six-month period.

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All taxed out, bunky? The Gateway Clipper wants to give you a discount. For one day only, tax day, Monday, April 15, cruises will be 25 percent off. Visit www.gatewayclipper.com for more information.

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ICYMI: American Airlines will start nonstop service from Pittsburgh International Airport to Los Angeles on Aug. 27. Read the Post-Gazette coverage here.

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roadworkaheadInbound Route 28 will be down to one lane from the 40th Street Bridge to East Ohio Street from 8 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. We continue to hear drumbeats from the work site that construction around the 31st Street Bridge will be completed early -- maybe a year ahead of schedule. PennDOT for now is sticking with the original projection of late 2014.

Piggy driver item: PennDOT will close the outbound left lane on Route 28 at various points between Etna and Fox Chapel from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays through April 19 while its crews remove “excess litter and debris” from the side of the road.

A section of the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway will be closed this weekend for construction on the South Highland Avenue Bridge and East Liberty Transit Center projects, and repairs to the Neville Ramp, Port Authority announced. The closure will begin at midnight on Saturday and conclude by the start of service on Monday, causing detour of the P1 East Busway-All Stops route through East Liberty. The route will not serve Penn, Herron, Negley and East Liberty stations during the closure, and will instead use Bigelow Boulevard, Baum Boulevard and Penn Avenue between Downtown and the busway ramp at Port Authority’s East Liberty bus garage. Temporary stops will be located on local streets near the stations: Bigelow at Herron, Baum at Roup/Negley and Penn near the East Liberty Target. Additionally, the P1’s Downtown stops will change slightly during the detour. P1 riders should allow for extra travel time during the work.

Travel on Interstate 79 in Butler County is going to get more complicated starting on Saturday. Starting then, northbound traffic will be shifted to the southbound side of the highway, with single-lane traffic in both directions, at a bridge replacement project at the Route 422 interchange, Exit 99 in Muddycreek. Delays are likely from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday while crews make the transition. The two-year, $14 million project will replace both bridges. Next season, southbound traffic will be crossed to the northbound side. About 25,000 vehicles use that section of highway on a typical day. Also on Saturday, the ramp from eastbound Route 422 to northbound I-79 will close at about 7 a.m. and remain closed through late July.

Lane closures and restrictions are possible on Route 837-State Street from the Glassport-Clairton Bridge to New England Road in Clairton and on Route 148 from the Port Vue-15th Street Bridge to Lysle Boulevard in McKeesport from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekdays starting Monday and continuing through June for resurfacing.

The bridge at the end of Duncan Avenue in Hampton, where it connects to Route 8, will close April 22 for replacement.

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BikePGH building a voting bloc

Written by Diana Nelson Jones on .

BikePGH reports that it has collected 1,700 signatures in its petition drive — the “I bike. I walk. I vote” campaign — to influence the next mayor’s policies on bicycle and pedestrian safety, including better infrastructure to make bicycling in the city more inviting to more people.
 
If that number of people cast votes with bicycling and pedestrian issues in mind, that’s a significant voting bloc that could determine the outcome of the election.
 
BikePGH hopes to collect 3,000 signatures before the democratic primary on May 21.
 
“Under Mayor [Luke] Ravenstahl’s leadership, biking became safer and more convenient,” BikePGH wrote in an email. “The city installed bike racks, on-street bike lanes, as well as the recently announced bikeshare program to launch in 2014. Additionally, in 2010, the League of American Bicyclists honored Pittsburgh as a Bronze Bicycle-Friendly Community. BikePGH calls upon our next mayor to continue to invest in policies and infrastructure that will lift Pittsburgh to a Silver-level award and higher.
 
“Cities across the country are investing in safe, bike-friendly infrastructure because they are competing with each other to be the greenest, healthiest, and best able to attract talent,” said Scott Bricker, executive director of BikePGH. “The best part is, these mayors are finding that these initiatives are not only popular. They save lives.”
 
BikePGH has sent a questionnaire to all the mayoral candidates and will be publishing the results on May 1. The non-profit will also participate in the candidates’ forum on greenspace April 24 at the Heinz History Center. 
 
May 17 is Bike to Work Day, when BikePGH will make a push to get out the vote for biking and walking.

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Leader in "greening the ghetto" to speak here

Written by Diana Nelson Jones on .

 
The Green Building Alliance and Phipps Conservatory will present Majora Carter Thursday night in the Inspire Speakers Series at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland.
 
The event, from 5:30p to 8:30p, features one of the country’s leading consultants on how community development can be built on green jobs and sustainable infrastructure. The Majora Carter Group operates in the South Bronx, where her work helped establish Sustainable South Bronx in 2001.
 
In the video above, she talks about the effect of climate change on the poor and the need to address poverty and climate change together at an event of the Clinton Global Initiative in New Orleans in 2009.
 
Her urban green-collar job training and placement work, which she calls “greening the ghetto,” has been honored by the National Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council, among others.
 
Her focus will be on the importance of dynamic, diverse and healthy neighborhoods in our nation’s quest for national security.
 
The event will cost members of the Green Building Alliance and its partner organizations $25; all others $45.
 
Tickets can be purchased online, at the door or by calling Dana Snyder at the Green Building Alliance at 412.773.6017.

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Logan takes on Zephyr Street

Written by Diana Nelson Jones on .

 
loganspikeslitter
Logan Byers is a 10-year-old boy who was hit one day with a question that too many adults fail to ask themselves when they see a problem: “What can I do about this?”
 
It was litter that motivated him while playing outside one day last year.
 
“Every time I go out to play with my friends or my dog, I see all this litter on the street,” he said, referring to Zephyr Street in Sheraden. “It makes me have a dirty, stinking kind of feeling.”
 
His first idea was to alert the police. His letter was answered by Scott Schubert, the commander of Zone 6, who thanked him for his attitude and validated his concerns. At a community event last year, Councilwoman Theresa Smith suggested a meeting with the city’s anti-litter coordinator, Missy Rosenfeld, who helped Logan adopt his street as a Redd-Up Zone.
 
Yesterday, Logan and eight other volunteers, some of them fellow Cub Scouts, inaugurated Zephyr Street as a Redd-Up Zone by spending part of the afternoon filling seven large garbage bags with litter.
 
Logan and his “Litter League” will do litter sweeps on Zephyr four times a year with supplies of bags, gloves and other tools from the city. But Logan said he would probably organize more frequent clean-ups in between.
 
He also wrote a proposal to the principal at his school, Carmalt Academy in Brookline, to broaden his Litter League and adopt a Redd-Up Zone near the school. He has a power point presentation ready to show his fellow students in May and has already shown it to his Cub Scouts group on his way to earning a naturalist badge and a World Conservation award. He will present his Litter League information at an upcoming Kiwanis safety fair, said his mother, Barbara.
 
“It has been impressive to see him run with this,” she said.
 
“Kids at school, when I tell them about this stuff, don’t give much of a reaction,” Logan said. “Some kids beyond don’t care.”
 
Logan wore a suit and tie to City Council chambers one day recently, where he was presented as an exemplar of human behavior and started to get a little overwhelmed, he said.
 
“All I wanted was to get help cleaning my street,” he said.
 
But as many community advocates know, doing good has a tendency to start the ignition on doing more good.
 
“Logan,” his mother said to him, “You saw a problem, it bothered you and you took action.”
 
Photo courtesy of Paul Byers
 

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Annual Islamic women's conference about balancing life's demands

Written by Ann Rodgers on .

“Petals on a Flower” Finding the Balance in Our Purpose for Life” is the theme of the annual women’s conference at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, to be held Saturday April 20, 2013 from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the mosque in Oakland.
Tahera Ahmad, an associate chaplain at Northwestern University and head of the Islamic studies department at the Islamic Foundation School in Villa Park, Illinois, will speak on Islamic spirituality in the face of personal difficulties. Sohra Sarwari, who does personal coaching on life and business, will speak on striking a balance amid competing demands and commitments. Other topics include Islamic sisterhood, environmentalism, religious rights and leadership roles of women. The conference will begin and end with a Quran recital.
Individual tickets are $20 at the the door, with discounts for families of five or more, seniors and students.

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