Pittsburgh/Allegheny County Belt System

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The Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Belt System is a unique system by which Pittsburgh and surrounding neighborhoods are looped by color-coded, streets that also retained their previous names, instead of the number-coded limited-access roads that surround most American cities.

1 Belts
2 History
3 Compostion
4 External links

[edit] Belts

The five routes are (from outermost to innermost) are:

There is also a Purple Belt, which is not part of the original system.

[edit] History

The Allegheny County Belt System was developed by Mr. Joseph White, an engineer with the Allegheny County Department of Public Works, in the late 1940s as a wayfarer system, using a network of federal, state and municipal roads to offer residents' alternative traffic patterns which did not lead to downtown Pittsburgh's congested golden triangle. As such it actually predates the Interstate Highway System developed during the Eisenhower presidential years.

The Belt routes were not intended as high speed or limited access roads but instead as a well-defined road system away from the existing major arterials and their congestion.

The construction of the interstate highway system and regional parkways during the late 1950s through the early 1970s initially reduced the use and need of the Belt routes. However as urbanization of the county spread further out from the City of Pittsburgh, the Belt System helped to reduce the effects of suburban congestion. Many of the roads selected over fifty years ago today play key roles in the long-range regional transportation plans for Allegheny County. Many of the roads chosen for the belts have gone simple country lanes to urban collector roads and to urban arterials.

In its millennium edition Pittsburgh Magazine (published by WQED television), Mr. Joseph White was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the Twentieth Century in the Pittsburgh region. Rick Sebak from WQED television also produced a local feature on the Allegheny County Belt System in the 1990s.

The City of Pittsburgh developed a Purple Belt for the downtown area during the mid 1990s using the county system as a guideline.

[edit] Compostion

The Belt System consists of five beltways; Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red with travel distances of 40 miles, less then 39 miles, 80 miles, 109 miles, and 30 respectively. The Blue, Yellow and Orange are circular routes beginning and ending at the same points.

Prior to its acquisition by the Chevron Corporation in 1980, the Gulf Oil Corporation, with headquarters in Pittsburgh, published a map of Allegheny County prominently displaying the Belt System. Currently, Allegheny County produces maps featuring the Belt System.