Pittsburgh is not your average American city, and driving in Pittsburgh is not your average American driving experience. Anyone who has lived here for more than a week has already encountered the reality that makes Pittsburgh both charming and genuinely challenging for vehicle ownership: the alleys.
Not the kind of wide, forgiving alleys you might find in a newer Sunbelt suburb with generous infrastructure planning. Pittsburgh alleys are narrow, steep, often unpaved, and occasionally angled in ways that make you question whether the road designers had access to measuring tape during construction.
Add to this the bridges, the hills, the parallel parking situations on streets barely wide enough for two-way traffic, and the winter weather that narrows lanes with accumulated snow and ice, and you have a driving environment that genuinely rewards compact, maneuverable vehicles in ways that flat, wide-street cities simply do not…