Pittsburgh Bike Belt : A Modest Proposal

This has been a big year for bike trails in Pittsburgh, and there is the promise of more to come. Already we've seen the Point-to-24th Street / Strip District Trail opening and the long-awaited Duquesne-to-Munhall Steel-Valley-Coaster-Pipeline Trail opened on Friday. Both of these are tremendous.

This year we also expect to see the SouthSideWorks Trail complete, the PIT Airport connector trail will open, and we may see the Sandcastle connection open.

Which brings us to the matter of Names and Naming Trails. It's great to recognize people and to preserve memories by giving trails effective names like the "Mon-Whorf Trail". Some names are unwieldy, such as the Ruprecht S. and Penelope K. Rutherford Lower Burrel Multi-Use Health and Wellness Trail. If the official world gives an unwieldy name, the real world will assign a more pragmatic one, hence: Jail Trail, Casino Trail, Strip Trail, Southside Trail.

Although each community is justifiably proud of their efforts to bring forth their trails, for outsiders the distinction between the Southside Trail and the Baldwin-Brentwood-Whitehall Trail isn't intuitive. In the same way that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", the nomenclature of our trails restates the condition of our fractured local government.

With all due respect to the Bard, naming is not a trivial issue; on Friday, I had the occasion to call 911 seeking help for an injured rider, and it took a little while to suss out the specific name of the trail I was on. We may need a better system of trail names.

Fortunately, Pittsburgh has previously dealt with the problem of naming and marking routes that run through a variety of municipalities and domains. Let's look at some maps.

The map of today's Pittsburgh bike trail system looks like this:

(click image to embiggen in a new window)

Imagine What The Future Might Hold

Imagine what it would look like if the region is able to:

• fill in the southern gaps of the Montour Trail
• extend the Panhandle Trail on existing abandoned rail lines into West End Circle
• extend the Casino Trail to Neville Island

It might look like a belt system of trails:

(click image to embiggen in a new window)

Through a dozen local successes, we're on the verge of adding a new "belt" to Pittsburgh's infamous Color Belts: the Bike Belt.



I propose that we rename (and re-sign) the various Pittsburgh regional trails (in at least Allegheny and Washington counties) as the Bike Belt. Using the existing, much-loved and parochially functional color-belt framework would connect "new-green-bike" Pittsburgh with "yinzer-mullet-n'at" Pittsburgh.

Benjamin Whorf, Tom Murphy, Linda Boxx : The Mon-Whorf Trail

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) was an American linguist known for his ideas about linguistic relativity. His approach, often referred to as the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" (SWF), named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, suggests that language influences thought - to the degree that if a language can't express it, a person can't think it.

For instance, if a language does not contain words or symbols for time, a person who speaks only that language will not be able to think in terms of time. The SWH is seen in reverse social engineering in George Orwell's writing, in which the removal of words causes a subsequent inability of the population to think in terms of the newly-unnamed constructs.

Similarly, it appears that French citizens will soon be unable to think in terms of Facebook and Twitter if everything happens according to plan.

On the other hand, a person about to synthesize a new concept will only be able to think and communicate in terms of the new concept by assigning it a new name or neologism. Bringing new words into use can be the first step in bringing new things into existence. It's heady stuff.

A Modest Proposal

The purpose of these last few posts is to suggest that rather than call "it" the Mon-Wharf Trail, we might call it the Mon-Whorf Trail, recognizing the impact that language and words have upon thinking, people, politics, and eventually reality.

For instance, in 1992 a new term was introduced: "brownfield". Having the use of that word made thinking and action possible. On the wiki page for brownfields, you'll see:

One of the most well-known areas in the United States for brownfield redevelopment is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has successfully converted numerous former steel mill sites into high-end residential, shopping and offices.

The efforts that produced results in Pittsburgh trail development were led in Pittsburgh by Mayor Tom Murphy and led regionally by Linda Boxx. This year's series of trail completions and quality-of-life enhancements come to us because of Tom Murphy and Linda Boxx, along with several hundred fellow-travelers.

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Whorf's work continues to be appreciated by people who would bring about change. One of the next newish words, that will be just as significant as "brownfields", might be "viewshed". Just saying.


Urban planners think they've coined a neologism for a new concept; they believe they've invented something called the Green Belt.