PennDOT offers update on bridge projects
Walsh Granite’s Jeff Rossi points to the 2-mile detour route along Route 50 for the bridge-replacement project along Southview Road.
The current Southview Road bridge that carries traffic over Route 50. It will be replaced starting in August 2017.
HICKORY – Two cars crashed into each other the same day Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials updated the timeline for replacing the one-lane bridge where the fender-bender occurred on Southview Road.
The bridge, which runs over Millers Run Road in Mt. Pleasant Township, is slated for reconstruction beginning August 2017, and the work should take no more than 10 weeks, according to Jeff Rossi, spokesman for Walsh Granite, the joint financing and construction group leading most of the bridge projects as part of PennDOT’s “Rapid Bridge Replacement Project.”
The project, worth $889 million in contracts across the state, aims to replace 558 bridges in three years. The last leg of the project in District 12 (Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties) has the remaining 73 bridges slated for completion in 2017, with 22 bridges aiming to open in 2016. The bridges, using many prefabricated materials and standardized designs, are built to last 100 years with a 25-year guarantee, according to PennDOT spokeswoman Leslie Richards. Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners was contracted to maintain the bridges for the guaranteed time.
Two of the bridges in Washington and Greene counties are nearly complete, and thanks to their phased design structure, they’re already open to single-lane alternating traffic, according to Rossi. A bridge on Scenic Drive in Daisytown will be fully open by January, as will Jefferson Road in Waynesburg. They have been open with single lanes and traffic lights.
The detour for next August for the bridge in Mt. Pleasant Township will be a 2-mile diversion onto Route 50 (Millers Run Road) on either side of Southview Road, according to PennDOT officials. The bridge, like most of the projects across the state, is being expanded. Rossi said the new bridge will have two 10-foot lanes with shoulders two feet wide.