I recently saw a couple get off a bus, with a stroller, and cross a five- lane highway with neither stop signs nor a traffic light. I couldn’t blame them. I, too, was jaywalking. One has to break the law to get anywhere along the stretch of Route 51 known as Clairton Boulevard.
The road is a vital artery for much of the South Hills of Pittsburgh. There’s no other way to get to my house in Whitehall from anywhere else, on foot or by car. But in its present condition it is not only inadequate but dangerous for drivers and pedestrians alike. Most recently Allegheny County released a notice of the May 5 death of a 42-year-old pedestrian who was hit by a vehicle on Route 51 in Brentwood. I pray that I’m not next.
If you’re fortunate like me, you learned to drive on Route 51. So you can handle anything.
After 18 years as refugees in Nepal, my family’s resettlement brought us to Lowell, Massachusetts. Unable to bear the cold and the lack of jobs during a raging recession, we migrated south in 2010 to Pittsburgh, which at least had a dedicated Nepali store.
No longer shackled to the spices at the Walmart, my family settled where most of the community did. As one store turned to two, then three, it was followed by restaurants, boutiques and salons. The Route 51 corridor through the South Hills soon filled with Nepali stores and restaurants due in part to its affordability following Pittsburgh’s deindustrialization.
Today, Route 51 is full of local businesses — not just Nepali restaurants run by Bhutanese refugees, but a who’s who of Pittsburgh’s mosaic of immigrant and refugee communities.
It is not, however, a safe haven.
Whether you’re in a car or on foot, Route 51 is full of mortal dangers. Take the bus stop nearest my home; without a shelter and steel railings one never knows how or where to get on. I’ve been yelled at by school bus drivers to stop pressing the cross signs, Port Authority drivers for allegedly trying to die by getting on the bus the wrong way, and sometimes by random drivers. All this has happened since I moved back home this April.
I now trespass on a country club’s property to walk to a safer bus stop up the street. I am fortunate in this sense. I am able to not only find a safe bus stop but walk to it. This is not the case for much of Route 51, where sidewalks suddenly halt and catapult you onto the road, or worse yet, there are no sidewalks.
Lonely bus stops can be found up and down Clairton Boulevard. There’s no way to get to them, unless you wanna play the world’s most high-stakes game of Frogger. Take the terrifying intersection of the busway, Route 88, Glenbury Street and Route 51. This section of the road has traffic signs and crosswalks, however, it is still perilous on foot. The bus stops place you inches from cars zooming by, and any shelters are now long gone.
So it goes on Route 51. A legacy state highway built to connect Pittsburgh to Uniontown, it now shares the land with the city and several boroughs that have grown around it. Still functioning with the same patterns of wide lanes, fast speeds and infrequent sidewalks, the roadway has been transformed into a highway of death for pedestrians.
It’s a miracle I didn’t get hit all those years.
A seven-year-old boy left in critical condition in 2019, a 61-year-old man dead in 2022, and the man killed in May all testify to the dangers of being a mortal on Route 51. A Texas law firm that analyzed National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System data from 2018 to 2022 reportedly placed Route 51 among the five deadliest state roads in Pennsylvania, with nearly six fatalities a year.
Route 51 stalls in its dangerous state despite well-intended attempts to right it. Papers have been written about how to remedy the fatal conditions on the road, however none have panned out. Noting the dangers of walking on Route 51, a report commissioned by the Route 51 Steering Committee and Economic Development South found that “Pedestrian-scale lighting is non-existent, making many walking routes very threatening after sundown.”
The road is a state highway, thus PennDOT is responsible for its maintenance, not the local boroughs and townships surrounding it. In denser parts of Route 51, there seem to be more safety features for pedestrians as is the case where I live, but as it becomes more rural and highway-like, the sidewalks and cross signs with traffic lights become infrequent.
[Editor’s note: In response to questions for this essay, PennDOT officials noted that local municipalities — not the department — are “the primary stakeholders in pedestrian infrastructure including roadway lighting” and emphasized safety is a paramount consideration as they seek to improve conditions.
“We are keenly aware of the issues facing pedestrians who are particularly vulnerable and work hard through education, initiatives, and countermeasures to make pedestrians safer,” Stephanie Zolnak, PennDOT District 11 Traffic Engineer, wrote in an email. Zolnak noted that much of the Route 51 corridor is “highly developed adjacent to the roadway curb,” limiting in places access to build out additional sidewalks. The department works with municipalities to determine whether sidewalks will be required around new developments along the roadway, and reviews all crash data “to incorporate safety countermeasures” for future projects, Zolnak added.]
Sitting as it does beside Saw Mill Run Creek, Route 51 exacerbates the barrage of water that rushes the valley it sits on. Flooding has become a real nuisance as we leave the sometime-in-the-future phase of the climate crisis and enter the oh-God-it’s-happening-now phase. Just this week on the way back from work, I got caught in a rainstorm and had to pull over to avoid driving on a flooded road.
There are many problems to address on Route 51. And to the credit of local and state officials, it is getting better. When I walked to high school in Clairton between 2015 and 2018, it was even worse. Today there are more sidewalks and crosswalks. As a resident entirely reliant on this roadway, I hope to one day be able to walk the entirety of Route 51, and if not that, then at least take the bus with a dedicated bus lane so I will no longer get to my stop only to find the next three buses have been delayed by traffic.
Route 51 has been embedded in my life’s journey. I walked it to my graduation from Baldwin High School, waited many times for my bus to Duquesne, and most recently use it to get to work on the bus and in my car. As such, it’s jarring to see death notices, and terrifying to see that couple perhaps pushing the stroller to their pediatrician, a child hurtling down one of its slopes going the wrong way on a bike, or a street performer trying to work the busy intersection with Route 88. I live in fear of the next death notice or article — not just for me, but all my neighbors who live and work around Route 51.
Avishek Acharya is a Bhutanese-Nepali refugee living, working and raised in Pittsburgh. He is a graduate of Duquesne University. He is a writer, community advocate, and historian. He can be reached by email at avisheka2@gmail.com.
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