A web of streetcar rails weaves throughout greater Pittsburgh. Downtown employees walk yards to catch a trolley. An interurban railway connects the city to green spaces in Butler County and as far north as New Castle. Shoppers cross streets where they please, dodging kids, not cars. There are no deaths caused by automobiles.This is not a future Pittsburgh imaged by eager urban studies students or the city’s 10-year plan. This is Pittsburgh in 1900. Ten years later, 1,600 automobiles were registered in Allegheny County. By 1930, there were more than 200,000.In 1931, The Pittsburgh Press reported that 189 pedestrians were hit by cars and killed the year prior. About 110 of the deaths involved jaywalking — broadly defined as crossing a road unlawfully. Nearly a century later, jaywalking concerns have faded faster than hopes of a Pirates playoff berth. On March 4, the City of Pittsburgh adopted Vision Zero, an international program that seeks to eliminate traffic fatalities. The program established a High Injury Network map and a fatal crash response group to find solutions where fatalities occur.In 2023, seven pedestrians were killed by vehicles, but the city’s Crash Data Dashboard makes no indication of whether jaywalking was involved. When asked why, Mayor Ed Gainey’s Press Secretary Olga George and three Public Information Officers did not comment.“It’s always been about power”“Our safety measurements in this country are a crime because we measure safety by risk per mile driven,” says Peter Norton, author of “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.” While expanding roads to accommodate more vehicles means “each mile driven may be safer, you drive more miles,” Norton says. “You can’t win that game. And we are losing it. Every day we’re losing it.”Since the 1920s, as cars have taken over cities, Norton says the shift leaves pedestrians two options: jaywalk or go out of their way to the nearest crosswalk. The latter seems the obvious and safer answer, but that may not be the reality, Norton says.A deeper exploration of the city of Pittsburgh’s Crash Data Dashboard contradicts Norton’s claim. By extrapolating the data on the city-generated map, only one of the seven pedestrian fatalities in 2023 occurred at an intersection. A woman was struck and killed at the intersection of Wilkins Avenue and Beechwood Boulevard in Squirrel Hill.Pittsburgh’s seven pedestrian fatalities in 2023 occurred on the South Shore on West Carson Street; on the Bluff near the Birmingham Bridge; in Oakland on Second Avenue; in Oakland on Terrace Street; in Squirrel Hill at the intersection of Wilkins Avenue and Beechwood Boulevard; in East Liberty on Penn Avenue; and in Point Breeze on Penn Avenue. Image courtesy of the City of Pittsburgh.But Norton isn’t dissuaded.“It’s never been a scientific study about optimum safety or optimum traffic flows or anything, it’s always been about power,” Norton says.The advent of the automobile spurred a 100-year-old battle for power that has literally played out in the streets. A pedestrian’s place on the roads wasn’t taken away for their safety, it was taken through “huge marketing campaigns,” Norton says.How to win a war with marketingIn the 1920s, automobile ownership was a leisure activity, and the vehicles were designed with specific purposes. “The Sunday drive in the country was a major motive for people to buy cars, because you could take it out to a place that the streetcar couldn’t get you to,” Norton says.The most common car, the Ford Model T, was made specifically for the muddy and rutty roads of rural America. It was a tool for one job, not for everyday transportation.Under that marketing plan, though, the “tools” sold by automobile manufacturers appealed to a small crowd. To some, the price tag was too high. Other Pittsburghers could afford a car, but didn’t need one with easily accessible streetcars.Historic streetcar lines based on a 1954 Pittsburgh Railways service guide. This map was created by New York-based artist and cartographer Jake Berman. Berman is the author of “The Lost Subways of North America,” which visualizes the continent’s historic mass transit systems. So automobile manufacturers and fanatics — “they called themselves ‘Motordom,’” Norton says — reinvented the car to make it part of everyday life.“To make that work, you have to make some big compromises,” Norton says. “This was a great city, but we had to make it a worse city so that cars would work.”Manufacturing oppositionAs ownership revved up, cars sped their way into cities around the country, clashing with slower streetcars, horse-drawn buggies and pedestrians.Norton, in his 2007 article “Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street,” describes cars with war-like qualities: Motorists made claims to the street “by right of conquest. … Pedestrians (and bicyclists) cited custom to claim prior right, but custom could rarely withstand motorists’ superior power and speed.”Pedestrians who easily avoided streetcars and horses were being struck and killed by unpredictable drivers.To counteract public outcry, Motordom pushed for measures like crosswalks to keep pedestrians safe, which in actuality, redefined who had the right to the streets.As roads became “safer” for pedestrians, they became more convenient for drivers, encouraging more people to buy cars. Norton’s aforementioned game had begun: The miles traveled became safer, but more miles were driven.Men and women browse and shop in the old Diamond Market on June 15, 1914. The Diamond National Bank, Fort Pitt Poultry Co., Annex Hotel and Roberts Jewelry House are visible in this image. The old Diamond Market was replaced with Market Square in 1961. Photo courtesy of Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection via the University of Pittsburgh Library System’s digital collection.Motordom took to disparaging those who ignored crosswalks by calling them “jays” — midwestern slang for a country bumpkin, so to speak.“Because jaywalker bore the right connotation of rural backwardness, it was just the tool for this reeducation effort,” Norton writes.During the height of the push against jaywalkers, Boy Scouts in Providence, Rhode Island, hosted a “school for careless pedestrians.” In New York City, people would gather for “safety parades” to watch a clown get repeatedly rear-ended by cars as he walked down the center of a street.A Pittsburgh leftAlthough the war against jaywalkers was popular across the country, physical and sociocultural aspects of Pittsburgh allowed the city to partially steer clear of the clash.For the steel mill workers, automobile ownership was not just out of their budget, but impractical because they lived near the mills.“Those steel mills were overwhelmingly opened up before automobile ownership was even, say, at a 20% rate,” Norton says. “If you were a smart steel executive, you made sure that there was affordable housing near the mill because you wanted those workers.”Retail spaces inevitably popped up in the same areas due to the power of proximity, forming walkable communities.“Wherever you could meet your daily needs — by that I mean can you get to work, can you take care of your shopping, can your child get to school — any place those needs can be met on foot, they will be met on foot,” Norton says.Smithfield Street at the corner of Fifth Avenue on April 9, 1912. Photo courtesy of Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection via the University of Pittsburgh Library System’s digital collection.Some of these mixed-use areas still exist in Pittsburgh today — or will soon be created, by the looks of upcoming developments. To Eric Boerer, BikePGH’s advocacy director, spaces like the Strip District and Market Square are emblematic of how the city by design promotes jaywalking.“You can’t expect that everyone’s going to go to the next intersection when their destination is directly across the street,” Boerer says. “It’s almost like the way cities are moving, especially in those pedestrian-dense areas, is designing streets to encourage jaywalking so that cars are forced to slow down.”In the nearly two decades that BikePGH has tracked data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey, Pittsburgh’s large number of pedestrian commuters has consistently earned it a top-five spot compared to 60 of the country’s largest cities.Aside from popular destinations and places of work, physical aspects of Pittsburgh — from its narrow streets to its abundance of public staircases — also promote pedestrian activity, Boerer says.“Our topography … is a bit of natural traffic calming that we have here that other cities don’t benefit from,” Boerer says. “I go to other cities, especially in the midwest, and we just don’t have those wide roads that they do.”Setting the PACEWashington Road — which bisects Mount Lebanon’s central business district — is brimming with crosswalks. Still local officials took efforts to control pedestrian walking patterns a step further when they introduced an ordinance that fines jaywalkers $25 in 2016. Photo by Roman Hladio.Jaywalking has continued to go unpoliced in the greater Pittsburgh area, even though calls for enforcement have cropped up time and again. It is, after all, a formal offense written into PA’s consolidated statutes — although the term “jaywalking” is not used.Still, there is one township in the area that has continuously tried to curb jaywalking.In February 2016, Mount Lebanon — which its officials like to call a “walking community” — introduced an ordinance that would fine pedestrians $25 if caught jaywalking. In August of that year, Mount Lebanon launched its “Look Up Lebo” campaign to increase pedestrian attentiveness and safety.Advocates like Boerer rallied against the decision.“This car-centric way of thinking treats pedestrians as a menace to cars, instead of the other way around,” Boerer wrote in a 2016 BikePGH blog post. “Fining pedestrians will never get to the root of the issue: signals and crosswalks in their current locations aren’t serving people.In April 2024, the township refreshed its campaign, calling it, “PACE yourself, Lebo.” PACE stands for Pedestrian, Automobile, Cyclist, Everyone.Mount Lebanon Police would not comment on the 2016 ordinance, aside from saying that it, “in conjunction with State laws addressing the operation of vehicles on roadways and in school zones encompasses the goal of” the township’s new PACE initiative, according to an email from Mt. Lebanon’s Deputy Chief of Police Daniel Cuiffi.Neither Cuiffi nor Chief of Police Jason Haberman would confirm if the ordinance had been used since its implementation. Public Information Officer Laura Pace Lilley said in an email that the township prefers education over issuing fines.“On several occasions, we had an officer (dressed in a ‘Where’s Waldo’ costume) at the schools handing out reminders to people crossing illegally,” Pace Lilley’s email reads. “That created an opportunity for constructive conversation and learning rather than punishment.”Pedestrian crossing signs flank a crosswalk in front of Washington Elementary School in Mount Lebanon. Photo by Roman Hladio.Chief Haberman said in an episode of the “Inside Lebo” podcast that PACE is taking a holistic approach to street safety while leaving behind Look Up Lebo’s pedestrian-centric framework.“Speeding is the number one factor to determine whether someone is going to live or die if they’re hit by a car,” Boerer says.Preserving Pittsburgh’s favorite outdoor sportIn 1986, Pittsburgh Press columnist Phil Musick mused on Pittsburgh’s penchant for jaywalking. The so-called “artful dodging,” he writes, is Pittsburgh’s favorite outdoor sport.Musick published his column a few weeks after two women who were walking Downtown were struck and killed by automobiles. A Traffic Safety Committee was created following the deaths, and the city declared it would issue citations for jaywalkers. Musick was skeptical.“From birth, we have been taught that the basic instinct of the Pittsburgh driver is to scare the Pittsburgh pedestrian without actually maiming him, while the rightful role of the pedestrian is, by dint of personal bravery, to walk wherever and whenever he pleases,” the column reads. “Such open warfare is seen as both natural and honorable.”Norton and Musick both tell tales of David and Goliath: the agile pedestrian versus the relentless automobile. But Musick rests on the status quo, while Norton says it’s crucial to understand what the purpose of continuing down our current path is.“We’re on a treadmill of misery right now with the automobile,” Norton says.Pittsburgh is taking measures to get off the treadmill, and pedestrian deaths have dropped from 189 in 1931 to seven in 2023.Yet people still jaywalk in Pittsburgh, and people still die. But, Norton would argue, it’s far too easy to succumb to Motordom’s narrative.A raised crosswalk on Virginia Avenue in Mount Washington. Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure raised the crosswalk — which sits in front of the Mt. Washington Senior Center — in late June following a traffic study that showed yield compliance for pedestrians was low in the area. Photo courtesy of the City of Pittsburgh.In 2024, the city completed eight traffic calming projects adding speed bumps, curb extensions or raised crosswalks in hopes of reducing vehicle speeds.Six of them are at or near intersections with crosswalks, but only one of seven pedestrian fatalities occurred at a crosswalk last year. Vision Zero’s purpose is to make all modes of transportation safer. Will Pittsburgh’s iteration include our jaywalking habit?The post Pittsburgh’s deadly addiction to jaywalking may be a habit we shouldn’t have to kick appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh.