By Sean P. Ray | Managing Editor

September has come and summer is coming to an end. But before we bid farewell to August, let’s take a look back at the results of all our weekly polls during the month.

We kicked things off with one of the most pressing matters that’s been affecting not just The Northside, but Pennsylvania and surrounding states for the past few years: lanternflies. Specifically, whether people have seen less lanternflies this year, as we previously reported Pittsburgh Park Rangers predicted there would be fewer of the invasive insects this year.

Well it turns out our readers’ experiences line up with that prediction. A total of 75% of respondents said they’ve seen less lanternflies this year, while the remaining 25% said they don’t see them much at all.

Perhaps we’ve finally gotten the lanternfly population under control. Fingers crossed we don’t see any resurgences in later years.

Our next poll followed on the heels of VegFest, the Northside’s preeminent vegetarian/ vegan festival, as we asked readers how often they’ve attended. This was our least popular poll of the month, and all respondents said they’ve never been. But I suspect a fair few of our readers have likely been to the festival to enjoy its vegetable goodness.

Last edition we covered the unveiling of the newly redone Chestnut Street, featuring new bricks, sidewalks and several other improvements. As such, we asked whether our readers have driven on the new version of the road and what they thought of it.

The overwhelming majority, 83% to be exact, said they had driven on it and thought it was a “much smoother ride.” The remaining 17% said they hadn’t had a chance yet. Fortunately, no one answered that they didn’t know there’s a new Chestnut Street. Glad to know our readers keep track of everything The Chronicle covers.

Finally, we dove into one of the most contentious debates in history: Are hotdogs sandwiches? Our readers mostly leaned toward the negative in this case, with 66% saying “Sort of, but not really” and the remaining 33% said “No way.”

That finishes up our poll results for this month. You can vote in our weekly polls by visiting thenorthsidechronicle.com. New polls are posted every Sunday.

We’ll be back next month with a new round of poll results.