By Tim Puko
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review
PITTSBURGH — Jane MacLeod has spelled out the name of her street in Point Breeze to delivery people for 36 years. But they’ve never confused Juniata Place with Juniata Court, just around the corner, or Juniata Street, 20 minutes away in Manchester.
After a spate of 911 errors blamed on confusion over similarly named streets, though, Pittsburgh safety officials believe this may not be a chance worth taking anymore. They plan to start an effort today to review all 5,377 street names across the city, and they may rename those that share names.
Even high-profile locations such as Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue Downtown could be up for discussion, said Ray DeMichiei, deputy director of city Emergency Management. He heads the city’s Address Committee, which meets today to start figuring out how far it should go to ensure clarity, without confusing people with too many changes.
“I like it the way it is. I’m used to spelling it for everyone,” MacLeod said. “Changing a street name would be incredibly complicated. Can you imagine changing all your accounts — bills and credit cards — but telling people you’re not actually moving?”
Pittsburgh is not alone in dealing with such duplication. Westmoreland County started a readdressing project in 1998, and it took almost 10 years to finish, Commissioner Tom Balya said.
Atlanta has at least 20 streets named Peachtree, according to Marc Berryman, a 911 services director at Columbus, Ohio-based Digital Data Technologies Inc. and chairman of the National Emergency Number Association’s Next Generation Integration Committee.
It can take a big public relations effort to get residents to buy into the idea of name changes, said Kathy Liljequist, a Geographic Information Systems consultant at GeoComm in Minnesota.
A lot of progressive cities around the country had ordinances to guide new street names as long as 20 to 30 years ago. But many leaders feared renaming old streets might anger constituents or reduce some property values, Berryman said.
"(Pittsburgh officials) are not really behind, (but) they’re really taking a crapshoot because sooner or later, it’s going to bite them,” Berryman said. “Really it is lack of foresight from city planners who didn’t have these changes in place beforehand.”
Public Safety Director Michael Huss asked for the latest review after an Aug. 19 incident in which Allegheny County 911 sent paramedics to Overlook Drive in Schenley Park instead of Overlook Street on the North Side. The woman survived, but 911 operators made a similar mistake less than a month later, sending responders to Bigelow Boulevard in Oakland instead of Bigelow Square, Downtown, where a man collapsed and later died. On Sept. 12, 911 confused the location of a fatal fire on Ella Street in McKees Rocks with Ella Street in Bloomfield.
County officials did not respond to requests for comment.
“We’re dealing with problems that were created 110 years ago,” DeMichiei said.
With more than two centuries of history, including mergers, successions and urban revivals, Pittsburgh has dozens of streets that share names or streets that don’t connect, though they once did.
Two whole neighborhoods share numbered street names, with 11th through 32nd streets filling the Strip District grid, and South Third through South 29th streets in the South Side, which used to be a separate city. The North Side used to be separate, too, and retains several names -- including Overlook, Juniata, River, and North Charles -- that are used in other city neighborhoods.
“Street names tend to become embedded in people’s consciousness, in our cultural heritage,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., a preservationist who created Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “So it is a very difficult business to change them, even though the public safety issue is paramount.”
Some businesses have branded themselves with their street names: 21st Street Coffee and Tea in the Strip District, and Nine on Nine and Six Penn Kitchen, both named after their cross streets on Penn Avenue, Downtown. But those types of businesses are rare, said Michael M. Edwards, president and chief executive officer of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.
“I think it would be somewhat problematic, but I don’t think it’s fatal,” he said. “It’s change: We have to deal with change. We have to be a modern city, and the businesses will adjust.”
Ziegler, Edwards and other community leaders said public input should be part of the process. DeMichiei has worked on these issues since 1999, but mostly with confusion about street numbers. The city passed legislation in 2008 to create the Address Committee, which standardized what often had been a political process or an afterthought, DeMichiei said.
The committee has members from five city departments and Allegheny County Emergency Services who review all requests for new street names in the city. They get about 10 to 15 a month and use national emergency standards as their primary guide, DeMichiei said. As long as they stick to those guidelines, their decisions are final unless City Council acts to override them, he added.
Santino Petrocelli, manager at Chicken Latino on 21st Street in the Strip, said a name change likely would just make things more complicated.
“It’s easier to find because it’s between 20th and 22nd. (A change) would probably just confuse some drivers,” Petrocelli said. “It seems like an important cause to make sure 911 operators aren’t confused, but I’m skeptical because (the numbered grid) is so logical when you’re down here.”
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