Ben Avon, Church Avenue, at Ben Avon Borough Building. Source: Ray Gastil, April 2021.
The Remaking Cities Institute (RCI) and Traffic21 CMU faculty are working with communities in Allegheny County to address first mile/last mile and micromobility challenges that exist outside of the urban core.
The Linking our Networked Communities (LINC) project is underway in partnership with the Quaker Valley Coalition of Governments (QVCOG) and the communities of Bellevue, Avalon, Ben Avon, Emsworth, and Kilbuck. The study, supported by a challenge grant from CMU’s Traffic21 and the Mobilty21 Urban Transportation Center, focuses on critical issues for mobility and urban design for towns beyond the urban core in the Southwestern Pennsylvania region.
Ray Gastil, Director of the Remaking Cities Institute at CMU’s School of Architecture, is working on the project with Stephen Quick, RCI-affiliated CMU SoA faculty, as well as a small team of graduate students: PhD-BPD candidate Suzy Li (MUD ’13, MS of Architecture ’14) and Schuyler McAuliffe (M. Arch ’21, MUD ‘22). The challenge is to better understand how a series of Main Streets, developed during the early to mid-twentieth century streetcar era, can be more responsive to community priorities for local trips and destinations. The study is focused on those not using a private automobile for local trips, whether within a municipality or along a main street that connects them as a shared asset. Susan Hockenberry, Executive Director of the QVCOG, notes that the study issues include non-urban core micromobility strategies and last-mile urban design. Steve Quick adds that this work is ultimately about improving the health and sustainability of smaller communities: “Main streets are critical to communities’ ability to respond to changing patterns of work, delivery, and services.”
This study aligns with the ongoing work of the RCI to address the challenges for more equitable and sustainable mobility along state highway corridors, including the Rt 65 Corridor Study, led by the urban design research center at the CMU SoA and the RCI. Traffic21, a research institute operated out of CMU’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, and Mobility21, its affiliated USDOT National University Transportation Center in the College of Engineering, sponsored this year’s challenge grant funding with generous funding from the Hillman Foundation and the US DOT. The funding is a continuation of Traffic21’s mission to transform Southwestern Pennsylvania into a testbed for mobility innovation.