Construction projects on Parkway East and Fifth Avenue start this week
Construction projects to affect two high-traffic roadways in Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH —
Two major road construction projects in Pittsburgh are set to cause significant traffic disruptions, with work beginning this week on a section of Fifth Avenue and a section of Interstate 376 (Parkway East).
For the next four to six weeks, a three-block stretch of Fifth Avenue in Oakland will be reduced from four lanes to one as part of Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s University Line Bus Rapid Transit project.
“Allow for additional time for travel, leave early, pay attention to signage, pay attention to changing traffic patterns, and hopefully we’ll be wrapping up this phase of Oakland,” PRT spokesperson Melissa Rubin said.
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Crews will install five concrete islands between Bellefield and Lytton avenues.
“The islands serve a few purposes,” Rubin said. “They will help serve as a physical barrier between the new two-way bicycle infrastructure and parked vehicles. The other purpose that they serve is they will help reduce the length of the crosswalks for pedestrians.”
Rubin added that starting Thursday, drivers caught using the bus-only lane in the area will begin receiving tickets.
Work on a section of Parkway East known as the “bathtub” will also begin this week. The project is designed to address flooding issues that officials say have worsened in recent years.
“Unfortunately, the flooding has increased over the last several years in this bathtub area. So this project will do a fantastic job of reducing that frequency,” said Michael Adams, assistant construction engineer for PennDOT District 11.
Officials with PennDOT say the original flood wall in Pittsburgh’s “bathtub” area was built in the mid-1980s, and the area has flooded about 19 times since then. They estimate that if the current project had been completed earlier, the area would have flooded only twice.
On Thursday, signage will be posted to indicate that the westbound Grant Street on-ramp and the westbound Stanwix Street off-ramp will close. These closures will begin this weekend and remain in place until August 2027.
“What they’re going to first start doing is installing micropiles in that left lane in order to structurally improve that left lane because we’re increasing that wall height. So those are some of the first few things that will be done,” Adams said.
PennDOT officials also announced that a full 12-day closure of the Parkway East is expected to take place between June and July next year.
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