BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Yikes. Other options for 376 would have cut Frick and Schenley.

Fifth Avenue Alternate would have passed through the central portions of Frick and Schenley Parks, under Squirrel Hill, and the parallel Fifth Avenue to the eastern limits of the Golden Triangle. Again, the cost of acquiring property would have made the project unfeasible. Also, the only outlet would have been near the County Courthouse.

I love this too. They still haven't fixed that bridge.

In the late 1980s, time also began to take its toll on the Greenfield Bridge. This is the bridge over the Parkway on the western side of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel. One day, large chunks of concrete began to fall onto the Parkway. Many cars were damaged; fortunately, not many people were injured. PennDOT's response to this was to string large nets around the supports of the bridge, which are are still there today.

"fortunately, not many people were injured. "

Now look at that plan, and re-imagine if "Freeway" was defined as a 60 foot corridor with one lane of Bus Rapid Transit each direction, one lane of automobile travel each direction, and one lane of bike/ped travel each direction. That would almost be lovely. It's the definition of "Freeway" that's the problem. Free for who?

Yay for 35-cent-a-gallon gasoline!

If gas would have cost $3.50 then, we wouldn't have many of our current problems now.

If more people born during Reagan become more politically active than those born during Hoover, then this region will do fine.

@edmunds It's the definition of "Freeway" that's the problem. Free for who?

YEAH, DUDE!

Freeway = Free of traffic signals, stop signs, driveways, and at-grade crossings.

A highway designed so the carefree American motorist would never have to slow or stop, if only all those other motorists weren't creeping along in front of him.

(I once thought it meant "no tolls", but it doesn't.)

@StuinMcCandless:

According to this inflation calculator (http://www.westegg.com/inflation/), what cost $.35 in 1965 would cost $2.39 in 2010.

$3.50 in 2010 would have been $0.51 in 1965.

I'm thinking 51 cents a gallon would have been considered way expensive for gasoline ine 1965 - rather the way our contemporaries would view $5 gas.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2005/fcvt_fotw364.html

http://chartsbin.com/view/oau

I thought for years and years that gasoline would be expensive by now. Hasn't happened.

I imagine some of us will live to see gas over $20 a gallon. In terms of what the dollar is in, say 2060, I'm guessing taht will be $150 per gallon.

I know about the inflation calculator. That's a good tool for stuff other than gasoline.

On that, I'm more going by plain old memory of sitting on the seat of my father's 1961 GMC Suburban and him pulling up to the gas station at Harlem and Cayuga Creek Roads in West Seneca NY, circa 1963-65, and paying mid-30s cents per gallon. Gas was 59.9 a gallon the evening I drove to the Fleetwood Mac concert in Buffalo, July 3 1977, the cheapest fuel I can remember actually paying out of my own pocket. My entire childhood, gas was 30s-40s-50s cents a gallon. The first $1 gas I saw was August 1979. Memorial Day weekend 2001 here in Pittsburgh it was still only 129.9c/gal.

@Stu: There was a brief dip in gass prices in the 80's. I remember driving to college in fall of 1986 and the price in Grove City was $.67. Lowest I ever remember paying.

...is that right?! Now I am questioning my own memory. Not important except to note that I am clearly getting old and losing my mind slowly!

Seems plausible. Here's a chart with a little more detail than the one Mick posted (though the source is not so official). You can see a dip down to around .70 in 1986, though it seems to have gone back up almost immediately.

i remember the sunoco in homestead had gas for $0.89 per gallon in probably late 1998. that's about the cheapest i can remember it.

The mid-80's price drop followed years of crazy high gas prices... I recall it edging up close to $2.00/gallon in my small rural NY town. [There was a price fixing investigation not long after that.]

I still remember seeing this comic when prices start to drop...

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/blm/1986/blm860615.gif

Man do I ever miss bloom county. Sigh.

Remember in Die Hard when the cop is buying Twinkies for his pregnant wife?

http://bitsandpieces.us/2012/03/21/from-the-movie-die-hard/

Man do I ever miss bloom county. Sigh.

Deathtöngue!!!

@dan I used to have the flexi single that came in the trade paperback.

@colin: Me too. It's still somewhere in my parents' attic, I think.