The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Chokepoints. Pittsburgh is full of them. Especially so when you’re on foot. I’ve mentioned this a few times. It’s a city which is set up entirely for the convenience of automobile and truck drivers, and for vehicular ‘flow.’

That latter concept is a city killer. You want people to park their cars, walk around to local shops, and spend their money. This ‘system’ of highways facilitates the exit of that money to distant suburbs, and other municipalities, where it will be spent and the sale will be taxed by a different municipality instead. You want your citizens to spend money as close as possible to where they earned it.

Also – It really sucks to be a pedestrian in areas like this. Street crossings, in particular, are fairly scary. Meh!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One scuttled up the ramp to the Fort Duquesne Bridge. This section of Pittsburgh’s ‘North Shore’ where it’s found received quite a bit of attention during the late winter and early spring here at Newtown Pentacle.

Mainly so due to the presence of two ‘T’ Light Rail stations nearby the stadiums, which allowed one such as myself a quick and easy ‘debark’ point from a mass transit service that tracks back to HQ in Dormont.

Essentially, anytime I’ve gone ‘out’ for a scuttle in the last year or so, the plan has always involved using mass transit for at least one leg of the effort. Partially, this is economic, but it’s also kind of become a ‘challenge thing’ for me. Let’s see how far away I can start a walk, and…

For this particular day, the rideshare dropped me a couple of miles north for my starting point. The challenges offered by any choice in my route were;

a) finding a path which hadn’t already been polluted by my presence but was still photogenically ‘interesting,’ b) figuring out a roundabout way to get back to the T, c) not getting squished by a car while crossing streets.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’ve been noticing odd things.

While walking over the Fort Duquesne Bridge, I was keeping an eye out for what looks like a former pedestrian path, one which has been abandoned and intentionally clipped off. It breaks off of the riverfront trail, and is attached to an onramp of this bridge.

There’s a concrete barrier, pictured, which blocks the path towards the Point State Park, but the counter side of that path leading from the park is still accessible. Weird.

Go figure, huh?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Another closed pedestrian lane is present up on the bridge itself.

Normally, this POV is locked away from prying eyes, but the gate was unlocked and just hanging open, so I cracked out a shot. This pathway just terminates, at a spot where there were likely stairs or a ramp connected once, but which would now just offer a dead drop into the Allegheny River, from high above.

Fun.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The path from this area was pretty simple:

Bypass Downtown Pittsburgh by skirting its edges, and then cross the Monongahela River via the Smithfield Street Bridge. Ultimately, I was heading for that familiar brewery on Pittsburgh’s South Side where the CSX tracks are found and I like to shoot trains.

Still had a decent amount of walking to accomplish.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Hey Now! Speaking of CSX, and the southern shoreline of the Monongahela River…

Back tomorrow.

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