BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

There are bike lockers at the end of South 4th Street right by the river, that are not far at all from the T stop, if you want to try that route. I have no idea how the availability is.

That would be fantastic! Any hints as to how to look into that? Is there a phone number or a website? I tried searching with google but nothing really came up.

Google's travel time estimate is a bit inflated on short segments, because they go by official timepoints and don't interpolate.

For instance, consider the trip shown here in the second option: Red line from Dormont station at 8:19am, arrive Station Square at 8:38am, a four minute walk to the bus stop, 3 minute wait, then a #48 bus at 8:48am that arrives at 20th Street at 9:02am.

The 19 minute T ride time is reasonable. But there's no 4 minute walk to the bus stop required. It's maybe 30 seconds.

And their supposed 14 minute bus ride on the #48 is based on taking the official time point just before Station Square (Sixth Avenue at Smithfield, downtown) and the time point just after (Carson at 25th). The actual trip from Station Square is perhaps 6 minutes.

And bus service on that corridor is plentiful. The #51 alone runs every 10 minutes, which means on average you'd wait 5 minutes for the next one. And there are various other buses you could take instead.

So you'd probably spend 19 minutes on the T, maybe one minute to walk to the bus stop, 3 minutes on average waiting for a bus, then 6 minutes on the bus, and 3 minutes to walk 700 feet or so to the hospital. Total 32 minutes.

Once you get to Station Square, it's only a little over a mile to the hospital. So walking it on nice days might be an option for you too. Figure 19 minutes on the T, 20 minutes walking.

The walk from Station Square to bike lockers on 4th isn't far, but it's still about a third of the entire distance to the hospital.

Hmm, I guess the lockers I am thinking of are put there by Friends of the Riverfront, but maybe they are not for general public storage, I'm not sure how those work.

http://www.friendsoftheriverfront.org/files/bike_program.html

The bike lockers have bikes in them. You can sign up to "rent" them. Not sure if they are available in the winter months or not.

AFAIK, the blue bikes are not available in the winter, but who knows - it wouldn't hurt to ask if you could use a locker in the winter if there are no bikes in them. Maybe for a small donation to the cause...

+1 for steven's comments. Getting from the T at Station Square to Southside Hospital can't take more than about 20 minutes, even if you decide to walk it. Buses run frequently (at least a peak times). Just be sure you learn which ones continue east on Carson rather than turning up to Mt. Washington or South Side Slopes at Sycamore/McArdle, or 18th.

There's a woman near me who made friends with the bike rental place on the Jail Trail. She takes the T to the rental place where her bike is locked up and rides to her job.

Might be worth asking the rental people for a similar deal.

Someday, we'll get to use the Wabash Tunnel. Someday...

A few thoughts:

You can take your bike on the T as long as its not during rush hour, and as long as you're getting on/off at high level platforms. Not sure if that would work with your schedule though. Even if you are riding during non-rush hours, I highly encourage you to print out the hours from the PAT site, and have them with you. I"ve now been asked to "get off the train" three times by drivers who don't know when bikes are, and are not allowed on the train.

Other options are taking the bus (as was mentioned above) particularly since they will all have bike racks soon enough.

Lastly, and this may sound really crazy to you at first if you have not ridden your bike too much, the ride from Dormont to the Southside is not very bad. A small BMX bike with no gears may not be great for it, but going over Southern and down PJ Mcardle is a great option, and perhaps something to think about for down the line. Best of luck!