New safety changes are coming to the streets of upper campus.

The City of Pittsburgh and the University are collaborating to bring traffic safety improvements to the De Soto Street corridor in early April, including updating signage, removing crosswalks and installing warnings for pedestrians. Community members call the current area a “hectic mess” and are looking forward to upgraded infrastructure.

Crossing Terrace Street in front of Scaife Hall, a high-traffic intersection and site of frequent pedestrian accidents, was made illegal for pedestrians by the City of Pittsburgh. The existing crosswalk at the intersection will be removed.

The changes come in response to a safety study conducted in February by the planning consulting firm Kimley Horn, which investigated five intersections along De Soto and Terrace Streets between Fifth Avenue and Darragh Street on upper campus. 

According to the study, the corridor was the site of 28 crashes, with seven involving pedestrians, between 2019 and 2023. It identified pedestrian and vehicular safety issues within the area such as confusing or obscured signage, poor infrastructure and disruptive construction.

Hannah Jacob, a sophomore nursing major who frequently has classes in the nursing and medical buildings near the site, said she takes extra precaution when crossing Terrace.

“Sometimes there’s cars parked along the medical building that you can’t really see who’s coming, so you have to inch out and be extra careful,” Jacob said. “You have to be aware. There’s people coming from one way and the other way, and sometimes they are really fast and they don’t stop.”

David Salcido, chair of Pitt’s University Senate Campus Utilization Planning and Safety Committee, called the Oakland pedestrian climate “daunting.”

“Pedestrians face obstacles and dangers on the sidewalks, off the sidewalks at all times a day, whether traffic is light or heavy. It’s been that way for a long time, and there’s not a lot to do to remove those dangers entirely,” Salcido said. “We can’t make this a carless campus. The campus is always going to be superimposed on the traffic grid.”

According to Seth Bush, Bike Pittsburgh advocacy manager, a pedestrian in Pittsburgh is hit once every 34 hours.

Three pedestrians have died along Terrace Street since 2020, two within the past two years. 

Lt. Col. Mary Flaherty, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was killed by a UPMC shuttle bus in September 2020. Emily Watson, a UPMC employee, was also struck and killed by a shuttle bus in November 2023. Jessie Maroney, a mother of three and Pitt employee, was killed in a hit-and-run by a box truck in December 2024.

In March 2024, Mayor Ed Gainey committed the City of Pittsburgh to a pledge to “reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries for all who use city streets to zero.” The 2024 city capital budget under Gainey, established in 2023, also doubled local investment into traffic safety operations and initiatives.

Salcido identified the construction in the De Soto corridor, including the Victory Heights project and the UPMC Presbyterian expansion, as potential causes of the accidents.

“You can’t always go on a sidewalk that would be most intuitive to get to a building. You have to take a detour across the street and come from a different direction. And then cars are rerouted, and people aren’t used to driving where they’re driving,” Salcido said.

Jacob said she agreed the construction is a contributing factor to the increase in accidents.

“There’s so much construction going on, and obviously that impacts the drivers, because they’re trying to go in two different ways, they might get distracted,” Jacob said. “It’s a constant, hectic mess going on.”

Crossing streets legally is another way pedestrians can travel safely, Salcido said. 

“It is just sort of like a cultural Pittsburgh thing to jaywalk — and I feel that, I’m a lifelong Pittsburgher — but Fifth and Forbes? Not the place to do that,” Salcido said. “I encourage everybody to use our crosswalks at a bare minimum.”

As advocates seek to improve pedestrian safety, Salcido said creating a dialogue between the City and the local community is a key component to pedestrian safety.

“We don’t own the streets, and we don’t control them, and so it’s up to the City… to listen to our community and then attempt to act on it,” Salcido said.

In the meantime, Salcido said students and pedestrians can stay safe in Oakland by remaining vigilant.

“You have to treat every sidewalk and every street, every crossing as a threat to your life — and they are,” Salcido said.