WEST END BRIDGE PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY

Almost Three years ago, the Riverlife Taskforce announced a competition to design a pedestrian walkway for the West End Bridge. A little over 2 years ago, the winner was announced. Endres Ware, an architecture and engineering firm based in Berkeley, California won first prize with the design pictured below.

Since the winner was announced, there hasn’t been any progress made into actually building the structure. A few of us were recently talking about this and were speculating on what was going on. Maybe they are waiting to have the West End Circle project finished. Maybe they are waiting for the casino to be finished. Maybe the funding was pulled due to the economic status of the city and county. Maybe it was held up in City or County council waiting for approval. They all sounded like good explanations to me, but I decided to ask the Riverlife Task Force directly.

After asking if this project was still in the works, I received the Following response via email from Chuck Alcorn at Riverlife. “We are currently raising money for the project and it certainly continues to be part of our overall plan.”

This response was certainly short and to the point, but it tells us all we need to know. It’s a simple funding issue. Let’s hope they get the funding needed for this project because it would be very beneficial to the West End region. According to a 2006 Post-Gazette Article, Lisa Schroeder, executive director of the Riverlife Taskforce said this about funding:

"All of the teams who submitted [designs] gave cost estimates," Ms. Schroeder said. "We have some work to do to finalize those estimates and make them public. We will be working diligently and immediately to put together a strategy for advancing design and engineering and also fund-raising."

It would be nice if included in this project will be a bike lane or access lane to safely cross from Main Street to this walkway on either a bike or shoe leather express.

Someday this will be a nice way to bicycle to a ballgame or play slots or for students to get to class at CCAC. It'll be the best view for fireworks. If we know anything, a good view for fireworks in Pittsburgh is a must have.