Route 19/21 in Morrisville to close for project
WAYNESBURG – Route 19/21 in Morrisville will be closed to traffic Wednesday and Thursday nights while a contractor removes metal beams from the old railroad overpass as part of the ongoing project to replace the overpass and adjacent bridge.
The road will close from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. those nights and detours employed around the construction area, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Valerie Petersen said.
“One of the reasons we are doing this at night is that there is less big truck traffic,” Petersen said.
Separate detours will be used for passenger vehicles and trucks, as was done in December when metal beams for the new railroad overpass were delivered and installed, Petersen said.
Passenger vehicles will be detoured using Sugar Run Road and Porter Street.
Trucks will follow another detour because of the difficulty they would have negotiating the sharp turn at the Sugar Run Road and Porter Street intersection. The truck detour will use Interstate 79 and Route 19, between Ruff Creek and Waynesburg. Route 21 will be closed to westbound truck traffic at I-79 and trucks directed to the Ruff Creek exit and Route 19. Eastbound truck traffic on Route 21 will be detoured to Route 19 north in Waynesburg to Ruff Creek.
In addition to closing the road Wednesday and Thursday nights, Petersen said there may be other nights when work will be done requiring traffic to be restricted to a single lane in the area. During those times, traffic will be controlled by flaggers.
PennDOT is replacing the railroad overpass over the two-lane highway and the adjacent two-lane bridge, carrying traffic over Ten Mile Creek, with four-lane structures.
Gulisek Construction LLC, the contractor on the $15.1 million project completed construction of the new railroad overpass. Trains are now using the new trestle.
According to plans for the project, the company will now remove the old overpass and realign the road to route vehicle traffic onto the new section of the bridge that was built earlier over Ten Mile Creek. The company will then begin building the second section of the bridge and another railroad overpass to allow trains to use the original track alignment. Both overpasses will remain in place to allow the railroad to operate two tracks in the area.
The project, which got underway the end of 2013, is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2017.