About Pittsburgh Steps

An atlas of Pittsburgh’s public stairways: where each one is, how high it climbs, what it looks like and how to report a problem.

Pittsburgh has 739 public stairways, the count the City’s steps map layer and Bob Regan’s Pittsburgh Steps (2015) agree on. Their steps climb 22,040 feet, 76% of the height of Everest. This site maps 605 city staircases from the City’s detailed inventory, plus 265 park and trail staircases on a separate layer.

How the numbers are made

Staircases. The City of Pittsburgh publishes its steps inventory through the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center: 1,128 segments with step counts, photos and neighborhoods. Segments on the same street are joined into one staircase. A second City source, the steps map layer, fills in step counts the inventory is missing.

Climb. Steps only: each staircase’s step count × 0.54 ft, the average step height from Regan’s citywide totals, never more than the ground actually rises along the staircase. Landings and sloped walks don’t count. Where no step count exists yet, the climb comes from lidar and is labeled.

Elevation. USGS 3D Elevation Program 1-meter lidar (Western Pennsylvania, 2019): a ground profile every 5 m along every staircase, and the hillshade and 3D terrain on the map.

Routes. Walking routes between staircases follow streets and paths from OpenStreetMap. Routes export as GPX for Garmin and other watches.

Step counts under review. Some counts don’t match the hill or each other. Those staircases carry a note while they’re checked against Regan’s books and site visits.

Credits

• Staircase data and photos: City of Pittsburgh, via the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center. Photos are the City’s.
• Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program.
• Streets and paths: © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Map tiles: OpenFreeMap.
• Counts and history: Bob Regan, The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a Hilly City (2004) and Pittsburgh Steps: The Story of the City’s Public Stairways (2015).
• Map rendering: MapLibre GL JS.

Report a problem with a staircase

Open any staircase and tap “Report a problem”. Your report comes to us first: we check it and mark the staircase closed (or “use caution”) on the map for everyone until it’s passable again. Closed staircases are left out of suggested loops.

The same screen fills in a report for Pittsburgh 311, who repair city steps, with the staircase’s name, streets and location. You can also call 311 (412-255-2621 from outside the city).

pittsburghsteps.com is an independent project, not a City of Pittsburgh site. Privacy.