National Road Enthusiast Meet (Day 2)

Today was the second day of the first National Road Enthusiast Meet. We began the day at Primanti Brothers on PA 60/Steubenville Pike in Robinson Township. Everyone seemed to enjoy this slice of Pittsburgh, and I highly recommend stopping to have a Primanti's sandwich...or a Roethlis-burger at Peppi's, unless you're a Browns fan.

After that we jumped in our vehicles and traveled down PA 60 to Crafton to see the Industrial Highway. It is the remnant of one of the many cancelled highways in the Pittsburgh area, and now relegated to an access road.

Following that small excursion we headed back north on PA 60 to I-79 south for a visit to the Pittsburgh Regional Traffic Management Center at the PennDOT District 11-0 office in Bridgeville. South of the Parkway West interchange we saw some of the I-79 reconstruction taking place.

Dominic Munizza of PennDOT gave us an extensive tour of the center and demonstrated some of features of the ITS network. He showed how the VMS boards can be changed as well as the HAR (Highway Advisory Radio) stations can broadcast messages. We also got a demonstration of the cameras that line the expressways. In fact, we got to the TMC just after legendary Pittsburgh Steelers broadcaster Myron Cope had just been involved in an accident at the Banksville Road interchange.

The group met in the evening for dinner at another local chain with a road motif: Quaker Steak & Lube at The Pointe at North Fayette. Afterwards we took to our vehicles and headed into the city to check out the view from Mount Washington which overlooks the "Golden Triangle."