{"id":221731,"date":"2026-06-17T22:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/221731\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T22:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:21:08","slug":"some-pittsburgh-residents-say-they-were-blindsided-by-penndot-over-upcoming-commercial-street-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/221731\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Pittsburgh residents say they were blindsided by PennDOT over upcoming Commercial Street closure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some residents in the Swisshelm Park section of Pittsburgh say they were blindsided by PennDOT over when and how long Commercial Street would be closed.<\/p>\n<p>Commercial Street is scheduled to close on June 29 and remain closed until the new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/parkway-east-closure-commercial-street-bridge-one-month-away\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-absolute=\"true\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Commercial Street Bridge<\/a> on the Parkway East is replaced.<\/p>\n<p>A problem with the closure persists, however.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At our last meeting with PennDOT, they informed us there would be a one-day closure of Commercial Street to do a test slide for when they close the parkway to remove the bridge,&#8221; said Vicki Yann of the Swisshelm Forward community group.<\/p>\n<p>This major change caught them off guard.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We expected it to be completely closed July 10; now we&#8217;re stuck sucking it up for a couple more weeks,&#8221; Yann said.<\/p>\n<p>Yann says the fact that the road is going to be closed 13 days earlier than expected, and lasts a lot longer, is a pain, and they wish they had a better heads up from PennDOT.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to plan. Everybody needs to plan. We need to start building in time for your commute in the morning and commute in the evening.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>PennDOT released a statement to KDKA-TV, saying in part that they did inform residents that projected dates for closures could fluctuate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Once the date was set, we ensured the crews put up notification messages on the digital message boards surrounding the project two weeks in advance per the PennDOT standards,&#8221; the statement read.<\/p>\n<p>Yann, however, says PennDOT could have done a better job at getting the message across.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want better communication. This isn&#8217;t that hard. Just email us, and we&#8217;ll put it out to the community,&#8221; Yann said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some residents in the Swisshelm Park section of Pittsburgh say they were blindsided by PennDOT over when and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[16977,1730,3431,73,75,74,4081],"class_list":["post-221731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-i-376","tag-parkway-east","tag-penndot","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-road-closures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}