Opinion: So You Want to Drive in Pittsburgh? Here’s What You Need to Know.

PHOTOS BY DAVE DICELLO

So, you want to drive in Pittsburgh? 

Buckle up! Literally and figuratively. 

When I was a teenager taking Driver’s Ed, my instructor told me that if you can drive in Pittsburgh, you can drive anywhere. I thought he was overexaggerating a smidge, but after spending time in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, London and a slurry of other infamously difficult driving cities, I can say with full confidence he was not. 

Topographically, Pittsburgh is an interesting place. Because our roads and bridges had to be built around steep hills and deep rivers, the city’s infrastructure is chaotic (I’m looking at you, Fort Pitt Bridge), and sometimes out-of-date: Washington Boulevard’s infamously narrow lanes seem more suited to traffic patterns of the past, before massive lifestyle trucks and SUVs dominated the road.

Psychologically, Pittsburgh drivers are an interesting sort. Some of us are offensive, some of us are defensive and some of us will play either role depending on our mood that day. Other cities tend to stick to one MO in particular, but in Pittsburgh, we’re all over the place. It might not even be that we’re worse drivers; maybe we’re just less predictable. 

If you and 699,999 of your closest friends are visiting the Steel City for the 2026 NFL Draft, following a few simple-yet-completely-nonsensical traffic rules may help you plan for a smoother trip.

Rule #1: The Pittsburgh Left

This one even baffles me, and I was born, raised and taught how to drive here. It’s even weird enough to have its own Wikipedia page. Basically, if two cars are facing each other at a traffic light, one of which is turning left and the other is going straight, the left-turning car will take the right of way, even if common traffic knowledge implies it ought to be granted to the straight-going driver. If the driver going straight is a seasoned Pittsburgher, they’ll often signal with their flashers to let the left-turning driver proceed. 

Because our roads tend to back up so badly, especially at traffic lights, the Pittsburgh Left aims to eliminate potential gridlock. Many of our roads lack left-turn only lanes, too, especially within the city proper, which means no cars can proceed through a light if the car at the front of the line is turning left and yielding to traffic going straight. The Pittsburgh Left, while probably technically illegal, is a courtesy to keep cars moving.

Confused yet? Welcome to Pittsburgh.

Rule #2: Respect the parking chair (yes, really)

You may have seen the memes online about Pittsburgh’s parking chairs, but in reality, they are no laughing matter. We take our hard-earned parking spots very, very seriously, especially if we had to dig them out from three feet of snow. Those streets aren’t going to plow themselves, and odds are, the city isn’t going to get to them quickly, either.

The humble parking chair is no new trend; this Pittsburgh Magazine article explains the whole concept rather succinctly, but to sum it up, Pittsburghers put chairs in spots to reserve them; usually these spots are in front of their homes in neighborhoods where driveways are nowhere to be found and street parking is slim pickings. 

Even in the nicer months when the snow has long since melted, you may see a parking chair reserving a spot. Disrespect this time-honored tradition, and you may end up with a jagoff note on your windshield. 

Rule #3: You’ll get stuck in tunnel traffic no matter what.

Basically, what the title says. Pittsburgh is a city of tunnels – and a city of people who slow down before entering them. Numerous studies have been published trying to solve this civil engineering mystery, and hypotheses range from the perceived narrowing of lanes and the shrinking of drivers’ sightlines as the tunnel walls draw near to the sheer volume of cars that pass through during rush hour. Maybe it’s the number of signs drivers are accosted with that tells us all to slow down. 

When some people begin to slow, it means everyone will have to follow suit because of the bottleneck effect hitting the brakes has on traffic flow. 

PennDOT engineers have tried numerous things over the years to address this, but nothing has worked. The Squirrel Hill and Fort Pitt tunnels are especially egregious, so if you’re planning on staying on either side of them, plan ahead. 

Rule #4 Merge early. Or else.

Pittsburgh drivers do not like letting you merge; this is inexplicable and unavoidable. 

Even if you have your blinker on and there’s an opening for you in the next lane, no shortage of drivers will actually speed up to prevent you from getting over. The zipper method? Never heard of her. 

Maybe this is a gut reaction to the folks who fly up on the shoulder to sneak in at the last moment, unfairly avoiding the long line of gridlocked traffic that everyone else had to sit in. Or maybe it’s an overcorrection from the opposite problem – stopping on a highway to let someone slink in from an on-ramp at 20 mph – that also plagues city streets. 

Regardless, the infrastructure doesn’t help. Consider the Fort Pitt Bridge once again: Unless you want to end up going the total wrong direction (toward the Strip District instead of the airport, for example), you have exactly 700 feet to clear four lanes of heavy traffic, all traveling at highway speeds. This, combined with our infamously short and steep onramps, gives our roads a real Wild West feel. 

If you know you have to be in a lane to exit, merge early, even if it means you have to drive a little slower until you get there.

Rule #5: Our roads are literally just bad.

I mean, one of them famously opened up like a gaping maw and swallowed a bus. The sinkhole on Downtown’s 10th Street has since reached local legend status; ornaments were made about it. People even dressed up as Sinkhole Bus for Halloween in 2019. 

Studies show that we’re prone to massive sinkholes and landslides “due to a combination of steep slopes, along with underlying geology, soils, and anthropogenic modifications such as underground mines.” After the Fern Hollow Bridge in Point Breeze collapsed in 2022 – something that the NTSB found was caused by maintenance and oversight failures – PennDOT found that 175 bridges in Allegheny County alone were rated as poor.

While both the Sinkhole Bus and the Fern Hollow Bridge admittedly may be extreme cases, it illustrates a very common problem: our roads are ridden with holes and our bridges are not in the best shape. 

Deep pot holes, especially around water drainage grates and berms, have been known to pop a tire or even bend a frame on cars that traverse them too quickly. As for what causes them, theories include Pittsburgh’s unpredictable freeze-and-thaw cycles, the city’s excessive use of rock salt and our old infrastructure combined with heavy traffic volume on roads that just weren’t built for it. Or maybe we just pissed off some sort of ancient road deity at some point and are reaping the consequences for generations to come. Regardless, I know one thing: the roughly 57.6-cent-per-gallon gas tax we Pennsylvanians pay for roads and bridges is not doing any heavy lifting.

Keep an eye on the roads ahead if you do decide to brave Pittsburgh’s vehicular purgatory. Potholes tend to pop up when you least expect them, and they can smell fear.