Domestic Left #28: The mysteries of Pittsburgh
Driving in Pittsburgh is not for everyone, but the problem isn't the drivers. Pittsburgh drivers are actually fairly careful — the biggest complaint I have heard about them (from someone who grew up in Massachusetts, famous for its aggressive drivers) is, in fact, that they are too cautious and slow.
The challenge of driving in Pittsburgh is that the trunk arteries of its traffic aren’t like other cities, with ringroads carefully circling and expressways thrusting quickly and directly to their destinations. Instead they snake along the contours of the rivers and hills, twisting and turning and dancing over and under each other.
Growing up in the Midwest, rivers were wide barriers that one crossed with a certain amount of gravitas. My hometown was on the Kansas River, known affectionately as the “Kaw,” and there was only really one bridge across it. You only drove across that bridge if you were going to a destination in North Lawrence (generally, in my family’s case, the Mexican restaurant El Matador), or to I-70 to drive to Kansas City.
In Pittsburgh you cross a river like you’re crossing the street. It’s not known as the “city of bridges” for nothing. (Apparently there are more bridges in Pittsburgh than there are in Venice.) The bridges over water, while plenteous — there are three that cross the Allegheny between downtown and the north side within a span of about four blocks — are probably in the minority. Bridges arch over the deep dry valleys between Polish Hill and Bloomfield, between Perry South and Spring Hill, over parks and rail lines and busways and interstates, over other bridges.
Decades ago, the city of Rochester, NY boasted a set of interchanges known to locals as the “Can of Worms,” which forced drivers going east-west along I-490 to weave across multiple lanes of traffic merging from I-590 in a 40-mph zone. (In the late 80s, the multiple intersections were rebuilt to the tune of something like $100 million.) This is pretty much exactly what driving the interstates at the confluence of the three rivers in downtown Pittsburgh is like.
But in Pittsburgh it’s not just the big interstate interchange that could be described as a “can of worms” — there are dozens of intersections across the city whose tangled traffic flow is like nothing I have seen anywhere else. In my old neighborhood of Bloomfield, the way traffic flows around the Friendship Parklet requires you to, in one small stretch, literally drive on the left side of the road while oncoming traffic is on your right.
So driving in Pittsburgh can be challenging if you are relying on Google Maps, or, god forbid, an actual map. More than once I have ended up heading west towards the airport on I-376 when I merely meant to visit my friend Peter in Brookline. In fact, word is that Google located the headquarters of Google Maps in Pittsburgh precisely because it is one of the most challenging places in the U.S. to implement that kind of technology.
But once you have mastered it ... the thrill of the transition from the Liberty Bridge to Crosstown Boulevard to Bigelow Boulevard, or of seamlessly merging three lanes to the right from the Pitt Tunnel to I-279 while the other half of the traffic merges three lanes to the left from I-376 to PA-65, is like an initiation into ancient mysteries, esoteric knowledge incomprehensible to most, a ritual the satisfactions of which no one outside the secret order can comprehend.