Without cars, many international students struggle to get around Pittsburg

by Leticia Juang

PITTSBURG — Pittsburg State University international student Amine Belarei had a difficult winter.

“I couldn’t go to class, basically, because there was no sidewalk, and it was very dangerous actually.” he said. “I fell two or three times.”

Missing classes because he couldn’t get make his way safely due to the weather, being made fun of and having things thrown at him, and having to deal with spiders and bugs are just a few of the challenges that Belarei has been facing since arriving at Pitt State in August 2024—all because he chose to walk around the town. 

Although many Americans take for granted that they will use cars to get from one place to another, many international visitors go without while in Pittsburg. For them, Pittsburg’s walkability – or lack thereof – challenges students who end up facing struggles like absence of sidewalks in certain areas, poor conditions for pedestrians on roads and sidewalks, negligent drivers, inconveniently located crosswalks, and inconsistent street lights during night.

Belarei is a 23-year-old French student who flew across continents to pursue his MBA dual degree at Pitt State. Pittsburg is very different from his dense home city in France, where everything is near and not as spread out as in the U.S. 

He said he is very disappointed with the city’s infrastructure.

“I’m walking everywhere, and this is pretty difficult, especially in this country and in this town,” he said.

“I feel extremely excluded from the society here,” Belarei added. “This city is not made for walking.”

Belarei said one of the most difficult aspects of not having a car is how people around don’t understand the struggle. One day, he says, he had to miss class because of how heavy it was raining. The professor said that wasn’t a good enough excuse and told him to just get a ride, which Belarei said is not as simple as suggested.  

“I don’t want to disturb people, you know,” he said. “I don’t want to disturb them, and even when somebody’s giving me a ride, I’m like, ‘thank you very much,  I appreciate that, thank you, thank you, thank you,’ because I don’t want to disturb [them].”

Belarei is not the only international student that has faced unpleasant situations for getting around the city without a car. Lindsay Subteniente, a 27-year-old graduate student of technology management from the Philippines, uses an e-scooter to get to her classes during her two years in Pittsburg because of its convenience. 

Overall, she says that the experience of having a scooter here has been positive, but she remembered two isolated occasions in which she was made fun of simply for trying to get around town.

“There were times when I was in my scooter and I was passing a dorm, and then someone from one of those dorms shouted [because] they wanted me to trip, to lose my balance,” she said. “That was really mean, you know, and I actually called out the person. I got mad too, because I don’t want it to happen again. I don’t want it to happen to another person.”

On another occasion, she said that another student on campus pretended to trip as an attempt to make her lose her balance when riding the scooter.

However, bad experiences while walking around Pittsburg are not a rule. Santiago Morel, a graduate teaching assistant at PSU from Paraguay, has been living in Pittsburg since January 2024.

So far, he said that he has been having a good experience with getting around town in general, either by walking or riding his bike from the university’s campus to downtown Pittsburg.

“This is a really prepared town for walking,” he said. “It’s much different than my country. The sidewalks are really prepared for your bikes to never interrupt the riding. You don’t have some bumps, holes, or anything.”

On the other hand, Morel does point out problems that he has faced around the city. He said he is forced to jaywalk daily from his house in Crimson Village to PSU’s Crossland Technology Center because the crossroads are quite far from the building in which he works and has classes. He also said the city’s lights aren’t sufficient, that he’s nearly been hit by cars who don’t respect cyclists and pedestrians on sidewalks, and that it takes too long to ride a bike to get to downtown Pittsburg. 

He said walking around town would be difficult but that a bike makes getting around possible.

“I don’t need one [a car],” he said. “I can get by really easily with a bike. I don’t recommend walking everywhere, that’s not a good idea, you need at least a bike. This is a really small town, but you don’t need to get in a hurry to the other side of town everyday [if you are a student around campus].”

Others agree that there are ways to get around. Jonas Garibay is a 19-year-old sophomore at Pitt State from Washington state who chose roller blades over walking about a year ago, when his bike got stolen.

“I find it a lot more fun (than walking) because I could jog anywhere and it would be pretty much the same effort,” he said. “But I don’t know, I just love it.”

Garibay says that he usually gets around campus to the neighborhood Walmart with roller blades, but he also faces limitations especially because of the weather. 

“Most of the time, I just don’t go outside when it’s rainy, which kind of sucks if it rains for a week, because it definitely has rained like that before, and it was not very fun,” he said. “So what I would do is I’d probably call a friend and get a ride.”

He also has skated his way to Broadway, but it was not something he enjoyed because of the sidewalk’s condition, which makes him take side roads since the main road wouldn’t be safe.

“Broadway has pretty bad sidewalks,” he said. “The sidewalks on campus are pretty good. They’re all smooth, there’s not a whole lot of cracks, but the sidewalks on Broadway are either non-existent, or they have bumps, or there are bricks. It is not a fun time to go on them.”