Pittsburgh’s Twisting Byways Lead Artist to Write Driver’s Guidebook

In this city’s snarled mix of valleys, ridges, tunnels, bridges and spidery expressways, taking the road less traveled may, indeed, make all the difference.

That is unless it gets a driver hopelessly lost, something not too difficult in a city with more bridges (451) than Venice, Italy, (400) and plenty of pitfalls to misdirect the unaware.

A graphic designer tackled the task of explaining it all in “Pittsburgh Figured Out,” an $8.95 collection of maps that is a jazzy alternative to the fold-out variety found in gas stations.

“We have three rivers . . . full of twists and turns and cockeyed angles, and we have a set of roads and expressways to match,” author Robert Firth wrote in the introduction. “This is the charm of Pittsburgh.”

One motorist’s charm may be another’s frustration. Firth, president of Informing Design Inc. in Pittsburgh, said that hills, frequent road work and the absence of a bypass route make getting around difficult.

“Pittsburgh is so confined by its hills and rivers. In Western Pennsylvania you’re quite literally caught between a rock and a hard place in a lot of areas,” said Dick Skrinjar of the state Transportation Department.

Firth cited Interstate 579 (“one of the Pentagons of expressways we have here”) as particularly confusing. Its half-mile bridge links Interstate 279 with the Liberty Tunnels, but a driver must make a quick decision at a fork near downtown Pittsburgh.

Someone caught by surprise “could end up stuck in the South Hills for hours,” Firth said. “It’s not logical to have to exit to keep going somewhere and have to go straight to get off the interstate.”

Apparently, the commuting public was confused enough to need “Pittsburgh Figured Out.” About 40,000 of the first 50,000 copies have been sold since November, Firth said.

He said he was surprised to learn that some longtime Pittsburgh residents bought the book. “They were tickled by the fact that Pittsburgh was something that had to be figured out,” he said.

“Downtown Pittsburgh has so many one-way streets, I was scared to go downtown until I got the book,” said Mary Ann Lambing, 53, of suburban Wilkinsburg.

Definitely unimpressed by the book, however, were some real estate agents in the suburban South Hills. Firth described roads there as tough. He told of traffic jams in the main tunnel to town and asked readers, “Trolley, anyone?”

Firth says he tried to explain Pittsburgh by dividing it into neighborhoods and suburbs in chapters with titles such as “Attacking the East End” and “Secrets of the South.”

“Each map page was like a little letter to a friend, trying to get that friend to a party,” Firth said. “You want to feel that that friend is going to make it.”

Firth also attempted to explain the belt system, routes marked by color-coded signs in approximately 100 suburban districts. They were set up by Allegheny County to provide alternatives to driving through downtown, but some motorists find the system slow and confusing.

“It’s one of the great mysteries of Pittsburgh and it shows Pittsburghers have a sense of humor, because the belts are some of the slowest ways to get anywhere,” Peter Leo wrote in his Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column. “It’s also a way of dealing with undesirables. If you put someone on the Orange Belt, you’ll never hear from them again.”

The quirks of the region’s roads are nothing new. In 1937, famed journalist Ernie Pyle wrote that Pittsburgh “must have been laid out by a mountain goat.”

It was only two years ago that Mayor Sophie Masloff’s administration replaced Pittsburgh’s indistinct street signs with larger, blue markers identifying streets and neighborhoods. Some streets were unmarked before the change.

Pittsburgh travelers also tell of the Ft. Duquesne Bridge, a real cliffhanger in the 1960s. It was built nearly all the way across the Allegheny River, then left unfinished for seven years, said Rick Sebak, producer of “Flying Off The Bridge To Nowhere,” a public-television documentary about the region’s bridges.

The program was named for an accident in which a college student mistakenly drove through bridge barricades and off the edge, plunged 100 feet to the riverbank, but survived uninjured.

“You do have to be daring to drive here,” Firth said.