Mt. Lebanon examines replacing closed pedestrian stairway
At the end of Mt. Lebanon’s Inglewood Drive is a set of pedestrian stairs that has been closed for the better part of a decade.
Nearby residents would like to see the steps put back into use.
“We’ve fielded a few calls over the years, but it seems that there’s more interest currently than there has been in the past few years,” municipal public works director Rudy Sukal said. “So that’s why we looked at this and what the cost would be.”
The stairway was addressed at length during Mt. Lebanon Commission’s Jan. 11 discussion session, leading to a broader conversation about pedestrian mobility throughout the municipality.
Regarding the Inglewood steps, which lead downhill toward Gilkeson Road, a study by Gateway Engineers determined a “preliminary opinion of cost” for each of three replacement options: steel stairs, approximately $198,000; concrete, $187,000; and wood, $90,000. Removal of the stairs would cost about $17,000.
“In the event that the stairs would be replaced, from a sustainability perspective, concrete stairs or steel stairs would provide the most value,” Gateway’s Josh Scanlon told commissioners. “I think there is a construction component to this, too. This area is very challenging to get into. Access is tight. So the steel stairs could be prefabricated.”
He said the stairs had been installed prior to the construction of the Timbercreek condominiums at their foot, between 1970 and 1979, during which the layout was altered to feature two sets of steps connected by a paved walking path. Aggregate is recommended for a new pathway if the stairs are replaced.
Also at the end of Inglewood Drive is a small building owned by Peoples, and Scanlon said as relayed to him, the gas company has the potential of sharing the cost of the stairway
“If they were placing a gas line in the area or had planned maintenance to this building, they would be open to that conversation,” he said.
While commissioners voiced support for the stair replacement, they plan to address it further in discussions more directly related to budget items and capital expenditures.
“This is an important project, but it does deserve a broader look,” Andrew Flynn, commission president, said. “I think mobility, more broadly, is a discussion that we do need to be having, and it is a topic that I think this fits into very closely. I think it’s a question not just of walkability, but bikeability. How do we promote multiple modes of mobility throughout the community? This is a perfect example of that.”
Reopening the stairway, for example, would provide better access from Gilkeson Road to Markham Elementary School and the surrounding neighborhood. For now, pedestrians generally walk west along Old Gilkeson Road to a path that connects the street with the sidewalk along Cedar Boulevard.
Gilkeson Road has a sidewalk on its southern side, heading east toward the Galleria of Mt. Lebanon and Route 19. A pedestrian crosswalk near Timbercreek once connected both sides of Gilkeson, until its removal during a state Department of Transportation improvement project.
“We did request PennDOT to study it to see if we could put it back in, and they told us no,” municipal manager Keith McGill said, quoting a 2016 correspondence from the department: “The subject location does not meet the criteria to allow for the installation of a midblock crosswalk.”