{"id":238113,"date":"2026-07-08T05:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T05:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/238113\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T05:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T05:54:15","slug":"heres-how-penndot-is-going-to-move-the-new-commercial-street-bridge-into-place-on-the-parkway-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/238113\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s how PennDOT is going to move the new Commercial Street Bridge into place on the Parkway East"},"content":{"rendered":"

With just over two days until the Parkway East is closed for 25 days<\/a> so that PennDOT can replace the Commercial Street Bridge<\/a>, there are still a lot of questions about how crews are going to install the new bridge.<\/p>\n

It really is a mind boggling task, but the company that’s going to be responsible for helping PennDOT move the new bridge specializes in moving large objects.<\/p>\n

When a giant containment dome needed moved into place at the failed Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Mammoet, a company from the Netherlands<\/a> that specializes in moving heavy things, did the job.<\/p>\n

Mammoet will now be moving the Commercial Street Bridge into place along the Parkway East<\/a> — a trip of 120 feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

PennDOT Senior Assistant Construction Manager John Myler said that crews are planning on around a 24 hour time frame that the new bridge, which weighs 22 million pounds, will be able to moved in its entirety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"screenshot-2026-06-25-015222.png<\/p>\n

PennDOT will be performing a critical test on Thursday as crews prepare for the upcoming replacement of the Commercial Street Bridge along the Parkway East outside of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.<\/p>\n

KDKA Photojournalist Brian Smithmyer<\/p>\n

Myler said he’s aware of the talk about the bridge making its slide into place using dish soap, adding that there are times where dish soap is a very good lubricant and can be good in a pinch — but this is no pinch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“For this process, we are not using dish soap,” Myler said. “We have some, I don’t know the specific name of it, but it’s a manufactured lubricant, spray lubricant that will be applied to the Teflon that we’re sliding.”<\/p>\n

Mammoet’s 42 red jacks that will be used to lift and slide the new bridge are ready for the push.<\/p>\n

“The hydraulic pushing system has a three foot stroke, so it’ll be sort of like three feet at a time,” Myler said.<\/p>\n

Those three feet might be over 10 minutes to a half-hour or more, so will it be visible to the naked eye? Myler said that it will be, in spurts.<\/p>\n

Myler said the best time that the naked eye will be able to see the bridge moving is when it starts to come into alignment with the existing Parkway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That’s kind of a good visual moment where you’ll see like the movement very obviously,” Myler said.<\/p>\n

The entire process from the final car across the old bridge on Friday night to the first car crossing the new span is slated for 25 days.<\/p>\n

Myler said the process could be completed earlier, in a perfect world.<\/p>\n

“Everything has to go according to plan, but our goal is to not use all the 25 days,” Myler said.<\/p>\n

The contractor for the project is heavily incentivized to get the job done quicker, meaning that the sooner it opens, the bigger the bonus.<\/p>\n

There won’t be a lot of great places to watch the new bridge being slid into place in person, but PennDOT said it’s making arrangement to have live cameras follow the move.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With just over two days until the Parkway East is closed for 25 days so that PennDOT can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[16977,1730,3431,73,75,74,1704],"class_list":["post-238113","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-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238113","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=238113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}