Building bigger walls for the 'Bathtub;' Part of a decade-long project on the Parkway East
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- It was just last week when Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was in town and delivered a pile of money for some major road projects, and one of those involved the 'Bathtub' portion of the Parkway East in Downtown Pittsburgh.
John Shumway is here with a reality check on just when the work will be done.
The short answer is....not soon.
Parkway East drivers can get ready for a decade-long orange wave of construction, in fact.
When drivers splashed their way through the water in the 'Bathtub' on Monday morning, it put a spotlight on the need for work on that section of the Parkway.
"We're gonna raise the flood wall roughly two feet," said PennDOT District 11 Executive Jason Zang.
Right now, the 'Bathtub' along the Monongahela River floods when water levels reach 25 feet -- and Zang says it's happening too often.
"Every time that happens, it's a very expensive costly cleanup and it's also highly inconvenient for people," Zang said.
The infrastructure money coming to our area will raise the wall and also re-do the pump and drainage system -- and that plan is already in its preliminary design.
"We think we can deliver it by 2026," Zang said. "Smetime in 2026, actually deliver the bid."
Then comes the construction.
Meanwhile, the Buttigieg-announced funding will pay for an active traffic management system, which Zang describes as a 'very sophisticated and very comprehensive incident management system.'
That system will feature lane and speed limit controls and electronic warning signs at entrance ramps.
"If there's an incident, we can warn people before they get on the ramp and then just sit in the in the traffic flow and go nowhere," Zang said.
Zang says these projects won't add more lanes or drill a new tunnel, but it will help them manage the roadways better when there's an issue.
The new traffic management system is expected to be at least two or three years away from being operational.
The work will need to be done along with other work PennDOT has planned starting this year on the Parkway East that is expected to take at least a decade.
The work from Churchill to Monroeville gets rolling in a couple of months.
There's the Commercial Street Bridge replacement, the Frazier Street Bridge replacement, median barrier work from the Fort Pitt Tunnel to Swissvale, so expect work on the Parkway East to be ongoing for at least 10 years.