Joseph Sabino Mistick: DOMI's latest folly — bike lane in the Strip

If you ever wonder what has driven so many people into the arms of Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd, look no further than the insistence of the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) that a dangerous bike lane be installed along several blocks of Penn Avenue in the Strip District.

It is another example of nameless and unaccountable bureaucrats telling the people who invest in, live in and work in a neighborhood that they alone know more about what’s good for the neighborhood than the locals.

The DOMI proposal would create a choke point in the historic neighborhood’s main thoroughfare that would impede emergency vehicle access to the busiest section of the shopping district. There are safer and more sensible bicycle routes a block or two away.

If anyone believes DOMI’s ridiculous claim it is going to make Penn Avenue safer by adding a bike lane and more congestion to the street, they should remember DOMI’s folly with the Fern Hollow bridge. DOMI was in charge of that, too, and it collapsed into the hollow in 2022.

Sadly, the Penn Ave­nue bike lane edict is business as usual for DOMI, created and empowered by former Mayor Bill Peduto. Before he was defeated, DOMI’s high-handed tactics earned Peduto the nickname “Bike Lane Billy” because of the unbridled free hand he gave DOMI at the expense of residents and businesses. That policy has been continued by outgoing Mayor Ed Gainey.

The Strip District Business Association has filed suit to stop DOMI this time. Common sense at least has a chance in court, and another hearing is scheduled this week.

Regardless of the outcome in court, there will be plenty of potential losers on the city’s side. The new bike lane would be a daily reminder of the excesses of DOMI, and there will surely be lawsuits and severe financial consequences the first time an emergency vehicle is delayed or there is an accident or death caused by the city-manufactured congestion.

It is also possible that the attention DOMI has brought upon itself over Penn Avenue will finally focus attention on other DOMI-imposed abominations throughout the city. Residents and businesses all over the city have stories of being stripped of parking spaces, single intersections controlled by both stop signs and roundabouts, and dangerously indecipherable road markings.

Those officials who support this plan or who have sat on the sidelines and let it happen will face some serious accountability. Councilman Bobby Wilson represents the Strip District, and he has sided with the few people who will be riding bicycles through the Strip District against his constituents.

Mayoral candidate Corey O’Connor, favored to win in the upcoming general election, has remained on the sidelines, rejecting requests he weigh in for the Strip. Some observers worry this is just the first sign that an O’Connor administration will be “more of the same” of what the city voters have rejected twice — Peduto and Gainey policies and managers.

As Carnegie Mellon University Civil Engineering Professor Sean Qian told WESA, “The winning strategies — what I’ve seen in so many different communities happening is that it does really need to have a coalition of every single stakeholder to sit down and discuss. It has to take the whole community to decide jointly what’s right and what to do.”

Here’s what Peduto, Gainey, Wilson and DOMI have forgotten: Pittsburghers are reasonable, willing to help, open to compromise and familiar with sacrificing for the common good. They deserve respect, instead of being run over roughshod.