I'm here in the Murray Avenue Bridge in Squirrel Hill, overlooking the Squirrel Hill interchange, where Interstate 376 Forward Avenue and Beachwood Boulevard come together.

Now, most interchanges, or places where highways and regular roads meet, are pretty simple operations.

There's lots of good signage, plenty of room to slow down, and merge.

This is Pittsburgh.

This entire city is built like a damn Mario Kart course.

And this is the worst of it.

But in just a few years, the entire area is going to look totally different.

I'm Noles.

I'm here to explore and explain.

Pittsburgh is a city built more for mountain goats than for people.

And that's hard enough to deal with when you have a city filled with huge steel mills, crisscrossing railroads, streetcar tracks, more bridges than Venice.

But like any other American city, Pittsburgh was faced with a dilemma.

After World War Two, everybody seemed to be moving to the suburbs, and everybody seemed to be buying an automobile.

So now thousands of people were coming and going every day, not by foot or by rail, but by private automobile to work, to school, to entertainment.

Downtown Oakland, Squirrel Hill, every neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

The streets were congested, traffic was out of control.

So part of the solution was to build the Penn Lincoln Parkway, stretching from Monroeville out to the new Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon Township.

The section from Churchill to Boulevard of the Allies was opened on June 5th, 1953.

Since its construction, it has carried both US 22 and US 30.

And it's also been designated I 376 since 1972.

Now, as far as urban freeways go, this one wasn't particularly destructive.

It was squeezed in skinny land between the river and the hill.

Sometimes on top of or next to railroad tracks, flying over some neighborhoods on bridges, tunneling underneath other neighborhoods.

There wasn't a lot of things torn down to build the parkway, but it was still a challenge to build it.

Because the land presented the same challenge it had presented to every other road and mode of transit over the last two centuries.

In Pittsburgh.

There's just not enough buildable areas in hollows and flats.

And so everything kind of has to be cockeyed to actually function.

And function is a pretty generous word when it comes to the Squirrel Hill interchange.

Here's what this holler looked like in 1938.

See the row of houses and the habitat for woodland creatures all gone.

There's no great way to fit a freeway with full exit and entrance ramps in here without it being a little bit goofy, especially considering there's already a three way intersection and that a 40 200ft long tunnel begins about a quarter mile away.

Most interchanges between freeways and regular roads fall into three broad templates.

You've got the diamond, you've got the cloverleaf, and you've got the trumpet.

The diamond is your prototypical rural or suburban interchange, where the roads meet at roughly 90 degree angles, and there's two stop lighted intersections formed by the ramps coming out, or at the very least, stop signs.

Traffic turns.

You have left turns.

Very simple.

Easy to build.

Then you've got cloverleaf, which is your more old school loop de loop kind of design, usually between a highway and a road with a higher capacity.

They take up a lot of room.

Trucks tend to turn over on those ramps very often.

They create a lot of weaving patterns.

They're not really safe for a number of reasons.

And so they're not really built anymore for those reasons.

Then you've got trumpet interchanges, which are usually found on tolled highways or in situations where the geography simply demands it.

And there can't be an exit on both sides of the road.

The Squirrel Hill interchange is none of those.

It is its own beast.

I call this type of intersection the scared Squirrel.

You can see he's laying here on his stomach, with his tail up over his back and one leg sticking out to the side.

His head is in the tunnel, presumably.

I'm sure this is exactly what the highway planners had in mind and just wanted to have a little bit of fun, seeing as we're in Squirrel Hill.

But I can assure you, it is not fun to drive at all.

So here's how this thing works.

If you're coming out of Squirrel Hill and heading downtown, you just bear right and stay in your lane for about a half mile until it emerges.

That's the simplest part of all of this.

If you're heading out of Squirrel Hill to Monroeville, you also bear right, but not as far right, and you weave into the westbound Beachwood Boulevard traffic merchant to a westbound off ramp and continue on Beachwood Boulevard for 950ft or so before turning right under the eastbound entry ramp.

But your trial has only just begun.

You come to a full stop and cross over the eastbound exit only lane in under 500ft, praying the whole time.

Let's say you're coming down Beechwood from Greenfield and getting onto the parkway.

You have two choices, both of which will put you on a sunken entrance ramp.

If you leave to the right, you can join the westbound traffic.

And if you stay left, you can make your way up to the eastbound ramp with the stop sign.

If you're driving eastbound on the parkway and you pass that lane with the stop sign, you're just about to exit the road yourself.

Slow down from about 60mph to 25 or so, and take your pick of three lanes that appear simultaneously.

You can either go to Squirrel Hill via Forward Avenue or to Greenfield via Beachwood.

Just be happy you're not driving south on forward and turning left into that.

Oh, and if you wanted to go from eastbound parkway to westbound Beachwood, you have approximately zero feet to merge across the eastbound exit ramp before turning about 150 degrees.

Finally, if you're coming out of the tunnel, your exit appears very quickly and requires you to take a 90 degree turn and head onto the wrong side of the road across the parkway before your spine realigns itself as you merge across the eastbound exit.

And take your own pick of those four aforementioned lanes.

It's like riding all of Kennywood roller coasters at once, but cheaper.

Unless you think about the medical bills.

Oh yeah, and there's a bus stop in the middle of it.

How do you get out there if you're not on the bus?

I have no idea.

But that's bad enough.

But it does get worse.

If you continue at Beachwood Boulevard to the south, you intersect with Monitor Street.

Fun fact, by the way, Beachwood Boulevard is so crooked, it actually intersects with Monitor Street three different times.

But anyway, the intersection functions like this.

If you've just left the parkway and are heading south, you'll either be in a left turn lane or straight lane is enough, but no U-turns.

You have a turnaround lane for that.

Northbound Beachwood splits to accommodate its grade separation up the way, but that means that left turns for monitor.

And if you didn't take the slip lane, you have to turn left.

Take longer and if traffic is backed up, can be very difficult to perform because remember, there's no light here, just one stop sign.

I was actually going to make fun of this 800ft long multi use path that goes from a natural gas gauging station up to a marijuana dispensary.

But it's been the only way I've actually been able to walk down to the Monitor and Beachwood intersection twice for filming for this video.

So kudos to this path that actually comes in handy for someone.

And let's not even talk about the five way honk fest that has forward Murray and percussion, because there are no plans to change this intersection.

But that brings us to the meat of this video.

PennDOT does have plans to entirely redo the Squirrel Hill interchange, as well as the minor to Beachwood intersection.

And I think the best way to tell you about that is to use the publicly available slideshow that was released after a public hearing back in February.

So strap in.

The first few slides of this are just going over the general information and the project goals, which I think are pretty self-explanatory at this point.

Making it safer for cars and pedestrians and cyclists, and also improving traffic throughput.

Though those two goals are usually at odds with one another Down here on page ten is the crash data.

So from 2016 to 2021 a 5 year period, if for some reason you exclude 2020 like they did, there were 248 crashes, which is 50 per year, which is one each week.

And as these heat maps show, the greatest number of crashes are in front of the tunnel at the forward Beachwood intersection.

And on that sharp westbound exit curve.

47% of those were rear enders.

And I think the only surprise here is that that number is so low.

Another 25% were fixed object crashes, which means people hit that wall on the westbound exit, which you can actually see the marks of when you drive that way.

Clearly, that curve isn't just giving danger, as the kids are saying.

It is objectively one of the most dangerous points of this interchange.

Here's a diagram to show you how absurd the current design is, especially considering there are apparently 50,000 vehicles per day going through here.

And they also list all the other problems this thing faces, like high traffic speeds on Beachwood.

The noise levels, the risk of flash flooding because you put down a square mile of pavement over a valley that used to have trees and a stream running through it.

There's also the stranded bus stop and the fact that it's extremely dangerous for pedestrians in general.

And now, drumroll please.

We have the first of three proposals.

Alternative B this would reconfigure it into a diamond interchange, if you remember that from a few minutes ago.

This is where all the directions of movement would have their own slip lane.

So those heading eastbound would begin to exit under the Greenfield Bridge and slowly climb up to a light on a new road that would then intersect with beechwood in a separate lighted intersection.

Those entering to head east wouldn't have a stop sign, but would still have to merge into tunnel traffic.

It is Pittsburgh, after all.

Beachwood and Forward would become a full three way intersection like they were before the freeway was built.

And to get from Beachwood onto the parkway westbound, you'd get into a left turn lane on Forward Avenue.

Those exiting westbound would have a stoplight on that new road, and those entering westbound would have the same setup.

We have now a really long lane from forward down to the Greenfield Bridge area.

Here's a mockup of what that would look like.

And I'd hope that at least plant some trees or wildflowers in the empty area.

Alternative D is a little wackier than B. It would have the eastbound exit on the left hand side, which to be fair, we're used to in Pittsburgh, and it would pull it up to a weird three way intersection where the westbound exit would meet it and Beachwood Boulevard.

Eastbound entry would still require a separate turn off of Beachwood, but you wouldn't have to stop and merge across any exit lanes.

So trauma avoided there.

The westbound entry is largely the same as it is on alternative B, and similar to how it is now.

Here's a mock up of that one, which gives you a good sense of the scale of these ramps.

Again, trees are wildflowers.

Please.

Now the third and final proposal alternative F. This is similar to alternative D with its swooping ramps.

But the eastbound exit now meets up with Beachwood further to the east, leaving the westbound exit alone at its intersection with Beachwood.

Again, we see the eastbound entry is similar to the one we have today sand stop sign, and this time elevated above the exit lane.

The westbound entry is, of course, pretty much unchanged, I guess because it's the only part of the interchange that ain't broke.

So they dont fix it.

The most notable difference here is how Beachwood bulges out to the north to make room for a separate one way street for local traffic only.

This would reduce traffic in front of these houses and allow for a bike lane.

And this brings me to a feature that they only chose to depict on this proposal.

But they said at the meeting could be added to any of these three.

And that's the run forward trail.

It's the brainchild of the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition's Bike ped committee and has been approved, as far as I'm aware, at all levels of government.

It would build a trail connection from Forward Avenue down along the right of way into Four Mile Run, greatly improving access for cyclists and park goers alike.

Something I really like about all these proposals is that pedestrians and cyclists are actually being taken into account this time.

Before we get into some data points, here's the mock up for F. They did choose to include trees on this one, just pointing that out.

There's actually a second mock up for F, which to me implies that PennDOT heavily favors F, but you could argue there's just more detail to include on this one.

There are a few things all of these proposals have in common.

The maintenance shed along the westbound entry is gone.

Beachwood Boulevard is all at the same grade, and most significantly, there's a roundabout at Beachwood and monitor.

Then they go into how much each alternative will affect travel times in each direction.

Based on 2048 traffic estimates.

Don't ask me how they calculated those.

Now we get into the table of consequences or as they call it, the project benefits matrix.

So all proposals would improve speeds and remove dangerous infrastructure.

They'd all improve pedestrian and bicycle safety and stormwater management.

All things being equal, the last page is where alternative B stands out to me as the best, but admittedly not a perfect option.

Only one house would need to be removed here, and it would cost the least amount of money.

It would remove over half a mile of street parking, but all the affected properties have driveways and garages.

I also think alternative B is the most esthetically pleasing, but I know that in highway design that doesn't count for much.

I don't like that the Beachwood bulges and automatically appended to all three proposals when they say in the fine print here that it could be that skews this matrix and is a little misleading.

I'd argue.

Same goes for the run forward connection.

If you can include it on all three, you should draw it on all three.

My final thoughts here are one.

That alternative D is the sacrificial lamb to make the other alternatives look better by comparison, demolishing 19 houses and spending nearly twice as much as the lowest option makes anything seem better.

And two, that PennDOT favors alternative F and is trying to nudge readers in that direction as well.

But I encourage you to pull this up yourself and look closely at all the options at your own speed.

I know this was a crash course of an overview, but hey, I don't have all day.

No matter which alternative PennDOT chooses, there will be a new roundabout at Monitor and Beachwood, and as long as drivers follow the rules of roundabouts, the should greatly reduce congestion in this area.

I for one, never drive here if I can help it because I have what my psychiatrist calls a completely irrational fear of being T-boned.

But a roundabout.

I'll go European vacation on that thing all day long.

No matter how monstrous this thing may seem.

Part of me will be sad to see it go.

There's a certain elegance, a certain je-ne-yinz-pas inspire to the whole thing.

But sometime in 2029, allegedly, construction will begin on the makeover for Pittsburgh's goofiest interchange.

What'll it be?

Option F, B or D?

While the truth of the matter is that you, humble viewer, have a say in the matter.

Using the project's website, which I've linked down below, you can leave a comment and tell them what you think about it, how it will affect your life, or more importantly, how it will affect your commute.

And after you've told PennDOT what you think about it, tell me what you think about it.

Drop a comment down below the video.

Tell me if you love me.

Tell me if you love it.

Tell me if you hate it.

Tell me if you don't live around here and it doesn't affect your life whatsoever.

Either way, I'll see you next time.

Thanks for watching.