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By Anna Dekleva and Marianne Holohan
Walkability is one of the things we love about the Greenfield neighborhood — it’s a top reason why young families move here. However, drivers’ increased recklessness over the last few years has led to harrowing experiences with car traffic for many in Greenfield. Cars have been zooming down Greenfield Avenue toward Saline Street and speeding through crosswalks by St. Rosalia’s and around corners by Magee Rec Center. Pedestrian visibility is low at the Ronald Street intersection. Meanwhile, there wasn’t even a “school zone” sign in front of Greenfield School.
As parents of young children, we got involved in local traffic-calming efforts because we felt we needed to protect our kids. We began circulating a petition in the summer of 2023 asking the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, known as DOMI, to take action and slow the traffic on Greenfield Avenue. We knew we needed to hold the city to a higher standard in order to protect our most vulnerable residents. At the time, a boy our kids went to school with was hit and seriously injured by a car near Magee Rec Center. We saw the shared concern in other parents’ eyes. That most certainly could have been one of our children.
While we waited for DOMI to act, we asked residents to slow down. It sounds simple because it was. Slowing down and watching out for each other is community care, and we all share this neighborhood as home. Anna publicly invited neighbors to join her on Aug. 27, 2023, at the intersections of Greenfield Avenue and McCaslin Street, and Greenfield Avenue and Kaercher Street to hold up signs asking drivers to slow down. Kids created signs that read “Your driving scares me” and “Slow down, save my life.”
It was a bigger turnout than we expected. We weren’t the only ones feeling unsafe walking our own streets, and we also weren’t the only ones willing to slow down as drivers. A lot of kids and families showed up that day. The kids enjoyed supportive honks and thumbs up as drivers stopped at the stop signs. Other drivers showed less friendly fingers, and one couple revved their engines and openly mocked. They weren’t in the majority, but these taunting dissenters revealed a confounding reality: traffic calming can be controversial.
Fast-forward one year and thanks to the more than 600 residents who signed our petition, as well as the advocacy of City Councilperson Barb Warwick, we now have traffic calming on Greenfield Avenue. While there’s still more to be done, families have noticed a big improvement when it comes to pedestrian safety at Kaercher Street, the Magee Rec Center and especially Ronald Street. Greenfield School parents and teachers have shared their relief that cars are forced to drive more slowly through the Ronald Street intersection, where children walk to and from school, as well as to after care at the rec center.
Traffic calming is a practical way to center the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers by reducing the risk of harm to each. The City of Pittsburgh articulates this aim in their Vision Zero project, which works to create conditions that reduce traffic deaths. According to the Federal Highway Administration and the advocacy group America Walks, vehicle speed directly affects driver visibility, response time, and likelihood of a pedestrian’s death from a collision. Slowing down increases the odds of survival for all parties during a worst-case scenario.
We’ve learned, however, that even though most people will say they want safer streets, they don’t always want to slow down or are highly skeptical that traffic calming actually keeps us safer. The Ronald Street bollards, for example, make some drivers feel like they’re going to run into another car. The changes require waiting, maybe 30 seconds at most, for your turn to move through the intersection while steering around the bollards. It feels slow and awkward, but this is actually the point. The bollards are meant to slow drivers down as they merge onto Ronald Street, reducing the impact of a potential crash at a hazardous intersection.
Change is difficult. We often perceive change as being asked to give something up, even when we have something to gain. This may help explain the resistance to the traffic-calming bollards at Ronald Street. The cost of a safer street is that we slow down and wait our turn. It feels like a loss to some. But it is also a gain for pedestrians, many of them children and families headed to school, the park and the recreation center. It’s an unfortunate reality that the safety of our most vulnerable residents is at the whim of drivers when moving around our streets. As drivers, we must take that responsibility seriously.
Community self-reflection is needed here. What kind of community do we want to call home? One where slowing down is considered too great a loss to tolerate, even if it saves lives? Or one where we take responsibility and look out for each other? Only we can decide.
Anna Dekleva and Marianne Holohan are both Greenfield residents and parents of children attending Greenfield School. Ms. Holohan is on the board of the Greenfield School PTO. Ms. Dekleva is part of the GCA Transportation and Development Committee.
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