Parkway West Named One Of Country's Most Congested Roads
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - The Parkway West received the not-so distinguished honor of being named one of the most congested roads in the country.
Motorists know the sight of cars bumper to bumper with solid brake lights on the Parkway West.
You can count on it pretty much every morning rush hour Monday through Friday.
"Every day it's just crazy. Starts at Carnegie and goes down and if you have to go to the hospital or anything like that in the morning, you pray that you have to be there at 6 or 5 in the morning and you miss it all," Bev Hafner said.
"It is a nightmare, yes, and it goes on until about 11 o'clock in the morning," Harry O'Toole said.
A study completed by INRIX, a traffic information company, is confirming what drivers have to say.
It ranked the three-mile stretch between Green Tree and the Fort Pitt Tunnels as the ninth most congested corridor in the country.
The top eight spots were all in New York or Los Angeles.
"It doesn't surprise me, no. I don't take it a lot, but when I do, you sit and wait and you sit and wait," Hafner said.
"I want to go over, fly over the hills, that's what I want to do. I'm going to put wings on my automobile, I am. I'm going to put wings on it," O'Toole said.
Those wings would save time because the study suggests the average commuter spends at least an extra nine minutes a day sitting in gridlock on the Parkway West. That works out to about 36 hours a year.
"We are in the process of conducting the study to look at options that may be able to alleviate some of the congestion to keep things moving more steadily during the [morning] and [afternoon] rush hours," PennDOT Spokesman Jim Struzzi said.
Although PennDOT is taking action, you're probably not going to see any changes any time soon. In the meantime, if you don't want to get stuck in all of that, you may want to consider an alternate route.
"You can take the Liberty Tunnel from the South Hills. You can take the West End, a lot of people don't do that and I think if people considered alternate routes, I think it may alleviate some of the congestion into the tunnel.
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