PennDOT's Road Construction Season Kicking Into High Gear
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- It's that time of year when the major road construction projects kick into high gear or get started.
Here's what is on tap locally just in the next five days:
1) Fort Pitt Tunnel: The inbound tunnel will be closed overnight tonight, Thursday and Friday night. The work will wrap up on Saturday morning by 6 a.m. There will be no work in the outbound tunnel.
2) Parkway West: PennDOT will try to complete the paving work that got rained out last weekend. So starting on Friday at 11 p.m., or an hour after the Pirates game, the Outbound Parkway West will close at Green Tree. All traffic will be detoured off onto Mansfield and through Carnegie to Interstate 79. That detour will be in place after the Pirates games on Saturday and Sunday, but if the weather cooperates should be lifted by the time the Penguins game ends on Sunday night.
3) Route 30 East Pittsburgh: The target here is the bridge that carries 30 over Bessemer Avenue. PennDOT is literally going to replace it in three days. Yes, three days! The bridge piers are in good shape so the old bridge will be demolished and the new (already constructed elsewhere) bridge will be set in place. The detour for eastbound traffic will be on Electric Avenue and through the Turtle Creek Valley and back to 30 on the other side. Everything should be back to normal by Monday morning at 6 a.m.
4) Route 65: This is one of the major projects of the summer and it's the reconstruction of 65 from the McKees Rocks Bridge to the Ft. Duquesne Bridge. At 9 a.m. on Monday morning Southbound 65 will go to a single lane from the McKees Rocks Bridge to the West End Bridge. On Tuesday, the lane closure will be extended on to the Fort Duquesne Bridge. In July, August and the first part of September southbound 65 will close completely at Beaver Avenue with all traffic dropping down to Beaver Avenue and running alongside 65 to the ramp back onto the road just before the West End Bridge. This year's work will finish just after Halloween.
5) Route 22 in Findlay Township: There's a lot of concrete patching to do between McKee Road and the Washington County line. So, starting Monday morning, the westbound side of the road will go to a single lane. The biggest impact of this work will be on concert goers heading for The First Niagara Pavilion. Except for the Zac Brown Band's concert this weekend, every concert crowd this summer will be impacted by the work on 22. PennDOT says anyone going to a concert to give yourself plenty of extra time because it will be congested.
And that's just the next five days.
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