Parkway West Closure Causes Confusion & Frustration For Drivers
PITTSBURGH (KDKA)- Drivers were confused and frustrated by this weekend's detour around the Parkway West closure.
PennDOT announced last week that the Parkway West would be closed starting 9 p.m. Friday on the inbound side between Interstate 79 and the Fort Pitt Tunnels. It reopened early Monday morning.
On Saturday, drivers said it took three to four hours to drive through the detour. Many of them were headed to the Pirates game.
Officials warned last week that there would be significant delays of up to an hour, but drivers say the detour took much longer than that.
"As I was driving, I saw the detour signs," said Antia Stubblefield Diamond, who flew into Pittsburgh from Mobile, Alabama. "We all followed the detour signs and it took four-and-a-half hours, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, just to get to the West End."
Diamond went on to say nobody knew what was going on and several people even ran out of gas trying to get through the detour.
"I'm angry with whoever the traffic engineer is, they should be fired," said Diamond. "It was so congested, people didn't know what to do. It was like we were going in a maze."
PennDOT press officer Steve Cowan told the Post Gazette: "We try to limit our impact on major event days. However, this work is extremely important and there's no way to do this work without a closure."
The Parkway West is undergoing a $70 million improvement project that requires these intermittent shutdowns.
The project will continue through December and will include several more weekend closures.
This was the detour PennDOT posted for the weekend:
Posted inbound (eastbound) detour route (between I-79 and Fort Pitt Bridge)
- Motorists will exit I-376 at the I-79 south (Exit 64A) interchange towards Washington
- Follow I-79 south to the Carnegie (Exit 57) interchange off-ramp
- At the end of the off-ramp, turn left onto West Main Street
- West Main Street becomes Mansfield Boulevard
- Turn right onto Chestnut Street
- Turn left onto East Main Street
- East Main Street becomes Noblestown Road
- Turn right onto Mansfield Avenue
- Turn left onto Greentree Road
- Greentree Road becomes Wabash Street
- Turn right onto South Main Street
- Turn right onto southbound Route 837 (West Carson Street)
- Take the ramp to East I-376/North I-279 onto the Fort Pitt Bridge
- End detour
PennDOT District 11 Executive Dan Cessna joined "The KDKA Morning News" with Larry Richert and John Shumway to talk about the traffic backups.
"We certainly knew it was going to be [an] excessive delay. We probably didn't expect in excess of three hours so it was pretty frustrating for the motorists and for us," Cessna said.
While the delays were longer than expected, Cessna said they did get done what they wanted to accomplish.
"It was a great weekend. As you know, we had fantastic weather the entire weekend," Cessna said. "Basically, from the Carnegie Interchange up through Green Tree, they will see the Parkway restored to the three lane configuration that it was before any construction began. So, we did get a significant amount of work completed."
While work will continue on the Parkway, Cessna said PennDOT, "Will not have to do anymore detours inbound like we did this [past] weekend."
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