The City's Department of Mobility and Infrastructure has begun installation for the Pittsburgh Pedestrian Wayfinding Signage Project, with construction installation by Power Contracting beginning this week at several locations in Oakland along Forbes & Fifth Avenue.

Weekday work hours between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. involve some traffic obstructions including parking lane, metered parking, and travel lane restrictions, though DOMI advises that adjacent sidewalks will remain accessible during the construction installation. "No Parking" signage is in place in all three construction installation locations including:

• Forbes Avenue between S Bellefield Ave & S Craig St from March 10-14 with parking lane, metered parking, and travel lane restrictions
• Fifth Avenue between Oakland Ave & N Bellefiefld Ave from March 10-21 with parking lane and travel lane restrictions
• Fifth Avenue between Craft Ave & Carow Dr from March 17-21 with travel lane restrictions

About the project: The City of Pittsburgh and its Wayfinding Advisory Committee has been working to establish new standards for pedestrian-oriented wayfinding signage with kiosks to be installed in Downtown, Oakland, and the North Side – areas selected for their high concentration of regional destinations. Though the focus of this current wayfinding work is on these neighborhoods alone, the strategy is designed with flexibility to expand the system City-wide.

While Pittsburgh has a long-standing driver-focused wayfinding system implemented in 1996, there is no pedestrian-oriented wayfinding signage within the city limits today. Wayfinding can help reduce confusion and create incentives for people to walk within and between neighborhoods, to explore as a resident or visitor, and to consider transit and other active modes. Thus, a wayfinding system must prioritize pedestrians, be grounded in best practice, and respond to the needs of different user groups. Successful wayfinding is achieved by providing the optimal amount of information at the right time, efficiently and clearly for all users.

The new system will feature three distinct sign types:

Dating all the way back to 2013 when the first stakeholder meetings were held, the project has been through numerous phases to date and input was gathered from a large and diverse group of stakeholders every step of the way to establish a vision, raise funding, collect data on destinations across the project area, conduct field surveys, refine those destinations to determine what would be included in the new pedestrian wayfinding signage system, establish design standard standards, develop a strategy for implementation, draft sign messaging and initial schematic designs, and ultimately complete the design of kiosks and other signage that will be utilized as part of the wayfinding system with approval from the Art Commission.

The Wayfinding Advisory Committee (WAC) included representatives from the City's departments of City Planning and Mobility & Infrastructure, Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership (PDP), Oakland Business Improvement District (OBID), Oakland Transportation Management Association (OTMA), Walk Ride Northside/North Side Cultural Collaborative (NSCC), Northside Chamber of Commerce, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC), University of Pittsburgh, UPMC, and various institutions to help gain consensus.

Outlined in the April 25, 2022 presentation from the PDP, WAC raised over $700k for design and community engagement, and the project was awarded $1.4 million in TAP grant funding for fabrication and construction in 2017 (fully funded on TIP as of May 2021.) Check out the presentation from Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership linked above for more detailed look at signage design, locations, and more, as well as this May 2020 Pedestrian Wayfinding System report from ARUP for some additional history.

Source: City of Pittsburgh, Wayfinding Advisory Committee