MOVING FORWARD ON TRANSPORTATION
The Mt. Lebanon Commission voted in September to award an $80,000 contract for the development of an active transportation plan. The contract for the plan, which will be done in collaboration with Dormont, was awarded to Toole Design, with Pashek+MTR named as a subcontractor. Pashek+MTR is the firm that delivered Mt. Lebanon’s Comprehensive Plan, a 10-year blueprint for community development, in 2023.
Active transportation is any form of non-motorized transportation — walking, biking, rollerblading — with the goal of reducing the carbon footprint. Mt. Lebanon’s Comprehensive Plan contains 13 mentions of active transportation in several chapters of the document, including parks and recreation, mobility and financial planning.
Recommendations from the comprehensive plan include coordinating Washington Road and West Liberty Avenue planning and design with Dormont; participating in a Southwest Planning Commission road safety audit for Washington Road from McFarland Road or Potomac Avenue to Cochran Road; reducing the number of car lanes on Washington Road, to create more predictable automobile travel patterns and reduce the distance for people crossing the street; and the consideration of reducing auto lanes and creating multi-modal improvements on Bower Hill Road, Connor Road, Gilkeson Road and Washington Road between Cochran and Gilkeson.
The plan will define policy, funding, infrastructure projects, implementation priorities and performance measures for increasing active transportation.
Some possible recommendations would include improved bike infrastructure, more traffic calming, a complete sidewalk network and safer school walking routes.
Commissioners expect to receive the completed active transportation plan sometime in 2025.
SIDEWALKS Residents on municipally maintained streets may now petition the municipality to participate in funding new sidewalks to connect to an existing sidewalk. Last year, the Commission approved a revised sidewalk expansion policy.
Following the adoption of the new policy, the Commission directed Gateway Engineers to conduct an inventory of all Mt. Lebanon sidewalks’ type, size and location, with the aim of compiling an estimated cost of installing new sidewalks and developing a formula for funding the installation through cost sharing between the municipality and the residents of the street.
Based on the study, the Commission has a list of areas where a significant number of residents have requested sidewalk installation. Woodland Drive is the first street to receive sidewalks consideration under the policy. The work is planned for 2025.
You can view the detailed sidewalk expansion policy, including the cost-sharing formula and list of streets where residents are requesting sidewalks, at www.mtlebanon.org/sidewalks [1].
TRACK OUR PROGRESS In January 2024, the Mt. Lebanon Commission officially adopted the 2023 Comprehensive Plan, titled “Ascend Lebo.” The 130-page plan took 18 months to create, with more than 6,000 points of input from the public. The resulting plan sets the course for Mt. Lebanon for the next 10 years. All municipal budget priorities, planning recommendations and even communication will take the plan into account, ensuring staff and elected officials are taking the municipality where our residents and property owners want it to go. Mt. Lebanon does not let its plans sit on the shelf. Indeed, about 97 percent of the goals set in our 2013 Comprehensive Plan came to be.
But how can the public chart our progress? We have created a new dashboard [2] on our municipal website. On it, you will see the five main goal areas: Resiliency, Mobility, Engagement, Parks and Recreation and Financial Management. Each of those goal areas has a percentage completion factor that is calculated based on each of the individual recommendations in the plan.
Further, the site lists each of the action items that correspond with each of the recommendations, and gives you a status for each item: Not started, started, in progress, complete or ongoing.
The site is another easy way to access the information in the larger plan (which is available in its entirety on the page, along with the plan’s index.)
The dashboard itself fulfills one of the plan’s recommendations: “Build tools into the municipal website to allow residents to understand and track municipal undertakings and accomplishments more readily. Include tracking tools and dashboards for municipal planning and implementation, budgets and capital improvement plans.”
We anticipate updating the dashboard once a quarter, throughout the next 10 years.
BUDGET SEASON Mt. Lebanon staff are putting the final touches on the 2025 Manager’s Recommended Budget. The Commission will hold budget review sessions at 6 p.m., on Wednesday, November 6 and 13, Monday, November 25 and Wednesday, December 4, in the Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building, Room C. in addition to the review sessions, the Commission will hold a public hearing at its November 12 and December 10 meetings, and vote to adopt the budget at its meeting on December 10.
CORRECTIONS Dan Paul was misidentified in 2 for Seder, October 2024. Also, an incorrect phone number for Obsidian Nails was listed in Under one roof, October 2024. The correct number is 412-848-6417. We regret the errors.