Traffic calming project in Glen Hazel aims for safety after 6-year-old fatally struck

A traffic calming project in Pittsburgh’s Glen Hazel neighborhood is designed to make the streets safer after a 6-year-old boy was fatally struck by a vehicle while riding his bike there last summer.

Mayor Ed Gainey on Friday visited the site on Johnston Avenue to watch as crews constructed speed bumps on Johnson Avenue between Second Avenue and Rivermont Drive. Crews also are installing traffic calming measures on Mansion Street between Glenwood Avenue and Johnston Avenue in the city’s Hazelwood neighborhood.

“It’s all about the safety of our children,” Gainey said after throwing a football with local kids who watched the construction. “This project will make it more safe. We don’t ever want to lose a child again.”

Jamel Austin last July died after being hit by a car on the 700 block of Johnson Avenue.

Councilwoman Barb Warwick, who represents the area, said the neighborhood had been calling for traffic calming in the area even before then. The stretch of road, which is a few blocks from the Propel Hazelwood school, sees many kids walking, biking and playing on it, especially in the summer months, she said.

Federal grant money through the Safe Routes to School program — which aims to improve pedestrian infrastructure near schools — is helping to bring additional safety improvements on other streets near Propel Hazelwood.

The mayor said the work on Johnston Avenue marks the city’s first traffic calming project of the summer.

Kim Lucas, director of the city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, said the city prioritizes traffic calming projects based on criteria like crash history, access to schools and recreation centers and an equity index that prioritizes communities that have been historically underserved.

Data collected in 2022 indicated that more than 75% of vehicles traveling on the Hazelwood and Glen Hazel streets seeing traffic calming improvements were driving above the 25 miles per hour posted speed limit. The rate of speeding, along with the crash history in those areas, “indicated a strong need for traffic calming intervention,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.

Work will include six speed tables and one raised crosswalk on Johnston Avenue and two speed humps on Mansion street. According to the mayor’s office, speed tables are “midblock traffic calming devices similar to speed humps but with a modified flat top that raises the entire wheelbase of a vehicle to reduce its speed.”

Permanent signage and pavement markings will alert drivers as they approach the speed tables and speed humps.

Lucas said the work is estimated to cost about $70,000.

The project, she said, is “going to save lives.”

The city each year does between 10 and 20 traffic calming projects, Lucas said, but they got 700 applications for such work last year alone.

“We are looking for ways to vastly increase our ability,” she said.