Pittsburgh Bike Route Safety Map

Pittsburgh is two cycling cities stacked on top of each other. Down at river level there is a 33-mile riverfront trail system and the Pittsburgh end of a 150-mile rail-trail to Maryland — flat, paved, and almost entirely separated from traffic. Up on the hillsides there are 37% grades, cobbled climbs, and arterials that riders route around on purpose. Which of those two cities you end up in depends entirely on the line you draw. Brakeaway scores any Pittsburgh route from 0 to 100 on protected infrastructure, trail connectivity, intersection risk, traffic volume, gradient, and surface quality. Paste a Google Maps link, upload a GPX, or connect Strava. The score appears in about 10 seconds.

How Brakeaway scores a Pittsburgh route

Every route you submit is analyzed across five factors. The weights are calibrated to Pittsburgh's actual conditions — a strong riverfront trail spine, a still-thin on-street protected network, river crossings that function as mandatory chokepoints, and terrain that no other large American city has to reckon with. The output is informational data and estimates, meant to be read alongside your own judgment about the day, the weather, and the traffic.

1. Protected infrastructure and trail connectivity. What share of your route runs on a separated multi-use trail, a protected or parking-protected lane, a Neighborway, or a bike-and-pedestrian-only bridge span? When BikePGH published its most recent Bike Plan analysis, Pittsburgh had roughly 58 miles of bike lanes but only about 6 miles of them protected, against 23 miles of riverfront trail. That ratio is why trail-heavy Pittsburgh routes pull away from street routes so sharply in the score.
2. Intersection and crossing risk. Pittsburgh's street grid is dictated by hills and rivers, so arterials converge at odd angles and bridge approaches are the pinch points. Brakeaway penalizes dense arterial crossings and flags unprotected crossings of the corridors the city's own crash data ranks worst — Fifth and Forbes through Oakland, East Carson on the South Side, and Penn Avenue through the Strip.
3. Traffic volume and speed. Volume alone is not the whole story here. Penn Avenue in the Strip District carries only about 4,000 vehicles a day, and BikePGH's own analysis of the corridor notes it still records the highest crash count relative to traffic of any street in the district, because the two-lane layout leaves nothing in a driver's way. Brakeaway weights road geometry and design speed, not just counts.
4. Gradient. This factor carries more weight in Pittsburgh than in any other city Brakeaway covers. Canton Avenue in Beechview averages a 37% grade across a short section and is the steepest officially recorded public street in the United States. Most Pittsburgh climbs are nothing like that, but a route that gains 300 feet in half a mile changes what a rider can do in traffic, so gradient is scored rather than ignored.
5. Surface quality. Cobbles survive on some of Pittsburgh's steepest climbs — BikePGH tells Dirty Dozen riders to practice the cobbles on Burgess Street in Fineview — alongside trail sections, bridge decks and grated approaches that all behave differently in the wet. Brakeaway scores surface segment by segment rather than assuming an asphalt default.

Best-scored Pittsburgh bike routes

These are the routes that consistently score highest across Brakeaway's factors. Scores are estimates generated from infrastructure data; verify conditions before you ride.

Three Rivers Heritage Trail (about 33 miles along all three rivers)

Pittsburgh's signature trail system, maintained by the Department of Public Works in cooperation with Friends of the Riverfront. It is not one path but a connected family of named segments following the riverbanks: the North Shore Trail running about three miles up the Allegheny toward Millvale, the Chateau Trail running about three miles down the Ohio toward Brunot Island, the Strip District Trail, the Eliza Furnace Trail, the South Side Trail, and the Duck Hollow Trail heading upriver toward Frick Park. Separated, paved, and river-flat, these segments score at the top of Brakeaway's range for their car-free lengths, with the crossings and street transitions between segments carrying the score down.

Eliza Furnace Trail — the "Jail Trail" — into Junction Hollow

The single most useful commuter line in the city. The Eliza Furnace Trail runs the north bank of the Monongahela and picks up its nickname where it passes the Allegheny County Jail on the way toward Oakland; at the far end it branches into the Junction Hollow Trail, which continues into Schenley Park. It is level, paved, and fully separated, and it does the one thing Pittsburgh street routing struggles to do — connect Downtown to Oakland without touching Fifth or Forbes. It scores in Brakeaway's High Confidence band for essentially its whole length. The tradeoff is that it runs alongside I-376, so it is a quiet line with a loud neighbor.

Great Allegheny Passage, Pittsburgh end (Point State Park to the Hot Metal Bridge)

The GAP runs 150 miles from Cumberland, Maryland to Pittsburgh, and its final miles are ordinary Pittsburgh riding: it runs co-terminously with the Three Rivers Heritage Trail through the South Side, across the Hot Metal Bridge, and through much of Downtown. For a local rider this means the best-built long-distance trail in the region doubles as a city route. The Pittsburgh terminus at Point State Park is the anchor, and a connector route from the Point also reaches the regional Montour Trail. Consistently one of the highest-scoring corridors anywhere in Brakeaway's Pittsburgh coverage.

Hot Metal Bridge (South Oakland to the South Side)

The bridge is actually two parallel spans, and the downstream one reopened in late 2007 for pedestrians and cyclists only after two years of work. It carries the GAP as the trail approaches the Golden Triangle, and it links Second Avenue at the Pittsburgh Technology Center in South Oakland to Hot Metal Street on the South Side. A river crossing with no motor traffic on it at all is rare, and it scores accordingly — this is the crossing Brakeaway will route you toward when your line has to change banks of the Monongahela.

South Side Neighborway (Sidney, Wharton and Muriel Streets)

Pittsburgh's first street signed as a Neighborway, running between SouthSide Works and the 10th Street bridge. The city treated the series of streets with signs, speed humps, sharrows and branding to work as a low-stress alternative to East Carson Street, and added an underpass and ramp beneath the Birmingham Bridge for direct access. It scores well below a separated trail and well above a painted lane on an arterial — which is exactly what it is. If your destination is on the South Side flats, this is the line that keeps you off Carson.

Penn Avenue protected lane (16th Street to the Point)

Downtown's established protected bike lane. BikePGH reports that removing a travel lane to build it reduced pedestrian crashes along the segment by 32%, which is the kind of measured result that is rare in bike-lane debates anywhere. It scores in Brakeaway's High Confidence band for its protected length and is the default east–west Downtown connector. The city has proposed extending protected treatment further out Penn between 31st and 22nd Streets through the Strip, where the current conditions score far lower.

Mon Wharf Switchback and the Point State Park connector

For years the Downtown riverfront network had a gap where the Mon Wharf met the rest of the trail system. The Mon Wharf Switchback, built by the City with Riverlife, is a fully lit, ADA-accessible bike and pedestrian ramp connecting the Smithfield Street Bridge, the Three Rivers Heritage Trail and the GAP down to the Mon Wharf Landing. Pennsylvania's DCNR then completed a construction project joining Point State Park to the switchback, closing the park's link to the GAP. Short, but it converts a set of disconnected high-scoring segments into one continuous high-scoring route.

Bigelow Boulevard parking-protected lane (Oakland)

Only about a block long, but it was Pittsburgh's first parking-protected bike lane and it carries an outsized amount of the Oakland network's connectivity, linking Pitt's campus toward Phipps Conservatory and Schenley Park. DOMI and the University of Pittsburgh have been redesigning the stretch of Bigelow between Fifth and Forbes with improved bike lanes as part of a larger corridor overhaul. Short protected segments like this one lift a route's score disproportionately because they sit exactly where the crossings are worst.

Pittsburgh by area — what to expect

Downtown and the Strip District

Downtown has the Penn Avenue protected lane, the Mon Wharf Switchback, and raised bus-stop-and-bike-lane treatments at Liberty Avenue and Stanwix Street — genuine separated infrastructure in a compact grid. The Strip is the weak link: Penn Avenue through the district recorded 115 crashes between 2018 and 2022, 45 of them causing injury and 13 involving pedestrians, on a street carrying only around 4,000 vehicles a day. The Strip District Trail along the river is the alternative line and scores far higher than the street grid beside it.

Oakland

The highest-stakes area in the city for cyclists, and the one changing fastest. Forbes Avenue got bike lanes between Craig Street and Bigelow Boulevard in August 2017, including Pittsburgh's first contra-flow bike lane and first bike signal. Those were built in response to the 2015 death of University of Pittsburgh employee Susan Hicks, who was killed riding home on Forbes. Oakland also has the Joncaire Street city steps, which carry a runnel so riders can push a bike up alongside the treads. Away from the treated blocks, the Fifth and Forbes corridor still scores in Brakeaway's Caution band or lower.

South Side

Flat, gridded, and well connected to the trail system via the Hot Metal Bridge and the South Side Trail. East Carson Street is the problem: PennDOT has described it as regularly topping the list as the region's most dangerous location for pedestrians, and PennDOT and the City spent $16.3 million on a project substantially finished in late 2022 adding bump-outs, new traffic signals, pedestrian islands and medians along it. The work improved crossing conditions materially, but Carson remains a corridor Brakeaway scores low relative to the Neighborway two blocks off it.

North Side and the North Shore

The North Shore Trail gives the area a continuous separated spine up the Allegheny toward Millvale, and the Chateau Trail continues down the Ohio. The riverfront here is among the most comfortable riding in the city. Connections inland from the trail are where scores fall off, because crossing the arterial ring around the stadiums and the bridge approach ramps puts you into fast-moving traffic geometry.

East End — Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, East Liberty, Highland Park

Residential street networks here are dense enough that low-traffic routing options genuinely exist, and the city has been extending the Neighborway treatment into them — including a neighborhood traffic circle on North Euclid Avenue and a proposal to run the Neighborway from Bunker Hill to Station Street to tie Highland Park to East Liberty and Shadyside. The Junction Hollow Trail and Schenley Park give the western edge trail access; the Duck Hollow Trail reaches toward Frick Park on the southern edge. The gradient between the flats and the ridges is the constraint, not the traffic.

The hillside neighborhoods

Beechview, Mount Washington, Polish Hill, Troy Hill, the South Side Slopes: the traffic is usually light and the infrastructure is usually nothing, but the gradients are extreme and the surfaces are inconsistent. Canton Avenue in Beechview is the extreme case at a 37% average over its steepest 21-foot section. Brakeaway will score these streets on their real traffic conditions, but read the gradient flag before you commit — this is where the estimate and the lived experience diverge most.

Pittsburgh's Bike(+) Plan and what's actually being built

DOMI published the Bike(+) Plan in June 2020 as a ten-year strategy for a connected network of on-street and off-street facilities, built around three facility types: on-street protected bike lanes, off-street trails, and Neighborways. The "(+)" is deliberate — the plan was written to cover pedal-assist e-bikes, scooters and other micromobility that would arrive during the planning period, not just bicycles. BikePGH's analysis put the plan at roughly 123 miles of new bike infrastructure over ten years, on a 2020 base of about 58 miles of bike lanes, 6 miles of protected lanes and 23 miles of riverfront trail. The MoveForwardPGH partnership between DOMI, BikePGH and the bike-share operator targeted 60 miles of new or improved infrastructure inside two years. BikePGH's current route map counts about 117 miles of marked bike routes in the city.

The single biggest change underway is the Fifth and Forbes rebuild attached to the University Line bus rapid transit project: 2.6 miles of protected bike lanes between the Cathedral of Learning and Downtown, which will be the longest continuous protected bike lane network in Pittsburgh when finished. The design includes bike lanes raised to sidewalk level with parking buffers, exclusive bike signals at intersections where drivers cross the lane, bump-outs to shorten crossings, six miles of dedicated bus lanes and 18 new transit stations. Construction started in 2025 with completion targeted for 2027, and a two-block gap between Bellefield Street and Neville/Ellsworth Avenue is being handled separately. For riders, the practical implication is that the corridor Brakeaway currently scores worst is the corridor most likely to change. Re-score an Oakland commute every few months and you will catch the segments as they open.

First-time Pittsburgh cyclist — the things nobody tells you

Rivers set your route before streets do. Three rivers means every cross-town trip is a bridge decision, and bridges in Pittsburgh vary enormously in what they offer a bike. Plan the crossing first and the street route second. The Hot Metal Bridge's dedicated bike-and-pedestrian span and the Smithfield Street Bridge into Station Square are the crossings most riders build around; the Birmingham Bridge connects the South Side to Fifth and Forbes and has a ramp and underpass beneath it for trail access.

Flat exists, but only near water. The riverfront trail system is the flat network. Almost every route in Pittsburgh that avoids serious climbing does so by descending to a river, running along it, and climbing back out. Planning a ride here usually means picking your climb rather than avoiding one.

The Dirty Dozen is a real thing. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, riders have spent more than four decades racing thirteen of the region's steepest hills over a roughly 50-mile course, Canton Avenue in Beechview among them. You do not have to care about it, but it explains why Pittsburgh cyclists talk about grade the way Portland cyclists talk about rain.

An e-bike changes the math more here than elsewhere. POGOH, Pittsburgh's station-based bike share, launched in April 2022 to replace Healthy Ride and runs a mixed fleet of standard FIT bikes and E-FIT pedal-assist e-bikes, with the assist engaging on climbs and from a stop. Allegheny County has $1.5 million in federal transit funding to expand the system past the city line, with about 40 more stations expected by early 2027. Brakeaway scores an e-bike route identically to the same line on an acoustic bike — the assist changes effort, not infrastructure.

BikePGH is the local source of record. BikePGH publishes infrastructure updates, maintains the city route map, and runs the advocacy campaigns behind most of the protected infrastructure described on this page. If you ride here regularly, it is the bookmark that pays off.

Resources

• City of Pittsburgh DOMI — Bike(+) Plan
• BikePGH — Pittsburgh bike map and routes
• Friends of the Riverfront — Three Rivers Heritage Trail
• Great Allegheny Passage
• Riverlife — Pittsburgh riverfront guide
• POGOH — Pittsburgh bike share

Frequently asked questions

Is Brakeaway free to use for Pittsburgh routes?

Yes. Scoring routes — in Pittsburgh or any other city Brakeaway covers — is free. You can upload a GPX file, paste a Google Maps directions link, or connect Strava to import existing rides.

Which Pittsburgh bridges can you actually bike across?

The Hot Metal Bridge is the standout: it is two parallel spans, and the downstream span reopened in late 2007 for pedestrian and bicycle use only, carrying the Great Allegheny Passage between Second Avenue in South Oakland and Hot Metal Street on the South Side. The Smithfield Street Bridge links Downtown to Station Square and now connects down to the riverfront via the Mon Wharf Switchback, a lit, ADA-accessible ramp. The Birmingham Bridge carries riders between the South Side and the Fifth and Forbes corridor, and an underpass and ramp beneath it give direct trail access. Brakeaway scores each crossing on its own infrastructure rather than treating all bridges alike, and bridge approach ramps often score lower than the deck itself.

Does Brakeaway account for Pittsburgh's hills?

Yes. Gradient is a scoring factor, and Pittsburgh is the city where it matters most. Canton Avenue in Beechview averages a 37% grade over a short section and is the steepest officially recorded public street in the United States, and it is one of the thirteen climbs on the annual Dirty Dozen ride. Brakeaway flags sustained gradient alongside traffic and surface data so a route that looks flat on a map does not surprise you. The riverfront trails are the flat option: the Three Rivers Heritage Trail follows the riverbanks, so almost every low-gradient route in Pittsburgh runs along water.

What is a Neighborway and how does Brakeaway score one?

A Neighborway is Pittsburgh's version of a traffic-calmed residential bikeway: a low-volume street treated with signs, speed humps, sharrows, bump-outs and neighborhood traffic circles so motor-vehicle speeds and volumes stay low, without adding a striped lane. The South Side Neighborway runs along Sidney, Wharton and Muriel Streets between SouthSide Works and the 10th Street bridge as a low-stress alternative to East Carson Street. Neighborways score well on Brakeaway because the treatment suppresses traffic rather than painting a line beside it, though they score below fully separated trail.

Which Pittsburgh streets score worst?

The Fifth and Forbes Avenue corridor through Oakland is the one Pittsburgh riders name first — BikePGH describes a wide roadway that encourages notoriously fast traffic, and University of Pittsburgh employee Susan Hicks was killed while riding on Forbes Avenue in 2015. East Carson Street on the South Side is a corridor PennDOT has described as regularly topping the list as the region's most dangerous location for pedestrians. Penn Avenue through the Strip District carries only about 4,000 vehicles a day but recorded 115 crashes between 2018 and 2022, 45 of them causing injury. Pre-score any route that touches these corridors and look for the parallel trail or Neighborway.

How does Brakeaway treat POGOH bike share?

POGOH is Pittsburgh's station-based bike share, launched in April 2022 to replace Healthy Ride, with a mixed fleet of standard FIT bikes and E-FIT pedal-assist e-bikes. Brakeaway scores a POGOH trip exactly as it scores the same line ridden on your own bike — the motor changes how a Pittsburgh hill feels, not how the infrastructure is built. Allegheny County has been awarded $1.5 million in federal transit funding to extend POGOH beyond the city line, with roughly 40 additional stations expected by early 2027.

How often is Pittsburgh route data updated?

Infrastructure data is refreshed monthly from OpenStreetMap and published City of Pittsburgh and DOMI datasets. That matters in Pittsburgh right now because the Fifth and Forbes protected lanes being built as part of the University Line project — 2.6 miles between the Cathedral of Learning and Downtown, under construction from 2025 with completion targeted for 2027 — will change scores along the busiest corridor in the city as segments open.

Informational only — not a substitute for local judgment. Verify conditions before you ride.

Last updated: September 24, 2026.