Parkway East reopens a week ahead of schedule

The Commercial Street Bridge was open for I-376 traffic both ways by 7:30 p.m. Monday.

By ADAM BABETSKI
TribLive

The Commercial Street Bridge is ready for primetime — well ahead of schedule.

The Parkway East reopened Monday night after crews successfully replaced the bridge a full week prior to the project’s expected Aug. 3 completion.

On Monday afternoon, project leaders confirmed the early reopening during a news conference at the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, which featured Gov. Josh Shapiro, Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, among others.

“I think 8 o’clock will be eastbound, and then we’ll do westbound shortly thereafter,” Shapiro said. “The PennDOT engineers and the team here of law enforcement, everybody’s got a plan on how to escort that first traffic through, and then it will just flow.”

Traffic began to flow even earlier than the governor predicted. A PennDOT livestream showed vehicles on the bridge by 7:30 p.m. in both directions.

The highway, part of Interstate 376, had been closed between the Squirrel Hill Tunnel and the Edgewood/ Swissvale exit since the night of July 10.

The bridge replacement project’s contractors are set to earn their maximum bonus of $2 million for reopening the bridge before 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. The bonus amount would have decreased by varying amounts hourly up to the originally announced Aug. 3 deadline.

Shapiro is no stranger to quick roadway projects — he oversaw the state’s response when workers famously reopened a section of I-95 in Philadelphia just 12 days after it collapsed in 2023.

On Monday, he said the through line between the two projects was PennDOT’s commitment to work as efficiently as possible.

“I know that people here in this commonwealth, they work damn hard, and they deserve a government that works just as hard for them every single day,” Shapiro said.

O’Connor added, “This is a great day. The Shapiro administration cares about Western Pennsylvania. And they do get (expletive) done. And they get it done quickly.”

O’Connor reminded commuters that Commercial Street — the road the runs under the bridge — will remain closed for another week. During the construction period, nearby Swisshelm Park residents have complained of cars swerving past construction signs and attempting to drive onto the road.

The new bridge was moved into place last week using a greased rail system and dozens of hydraulic jacks. It replaces the old bridge that was imploded July 16 in a controlled demolition. The project cost an estimated $95 million.

Shapiro said PennDOT believes the Commercial Street Bridge is the largest bridge to be slid into place in the history of the United States, at 846 feet long, 85 feet tall and more than 22 million pounds.

“This will forever be known as the ‘Pittsburgh slide bridge.’ We used this cutting-edge technology to slide it into place,” Shapiro said. “We wanted to do that because we didn’t want to inconvenience people in this area. Had we built it the traditional way, it probably would have taken four years.”

HDR Northeast Region Bridge Leader Nick Burdette walked through the various challenges his company faced while designing the new bridge, like demolishing its predecessor while protecting its foundations and ensuring it could slide into place with a margin of error one-eighth of an inch wide. Officials announced last week that they expected the bridge to reopen sooner than that after the sliding maneuver went much faster than expected.