With the new Commercial Street Bridge now bolted in place, PennDOT is sure the Parkway East will open to traffic by the middle of next week \u2014 and potentially earlier.<\/p>\n
PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said the agency has made a \u201ccommitment\u201d to the new timeline thanks to the project\u2019s quick progress.<\/p>\n
\u201c(We\u2019re) striving to do even better than that, if we can make it early next week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Workers finished sliding the 22-million-pound new bridge into place on Monday afternoon after doing most of the job on Sunday. The entire process took around eight hours, compared to the 25 to 30 hours total the agency had anticipated.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Carroll deemed the bridge\u2019s demolition and subsequent sliding maneuver \u2014 overseen by Dutch subcontractor Mammoet \u2014 the most impressive bridge project he had ever seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not a civil engineer, but you do not have to be one to appreciate what has already been accomplished here,\u201d he said. \u201cWith thousands of people watching the livestream cameras, we have all witnessed firsthand what I consider a stunning engineering achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n
PennDOT and its contractors, including HDR and Fay, have been working 24 hours a day since the bridge closed on July 10 in recognition of how important the Parkway East is to the city\u2019s transportation infrastructure, Carroll said.<\/p>\n
They also have plenty of incentive to complete the $95 million project ahead of schedule. The contractors stand to earn their maximum bonus \u2014 $2 million \u2014 if the bridge opens before 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Carroll wouldn\u2019t guarantee the bridge opening by then, but he noted the bonus would decrease by the hour until the previously planned Aug. 3 date. The hourly decreases varied by time of day and day of the week, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA delay from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. is not as impactful as a delay from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m.,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Carroll was clear that contractors weren\u2019t rushing to get the job done. The Aug. 3 date accounted for potential equipment failures or severe weather, so the agency would not have to delay its timeline beyond what the public was expecting, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to set a schedule that overstates our ability to deliver,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That principle held on Wednesday; Carroll said PennDOT would not officially announce a reopening date until after this weekend\u2019s forecasted storms.<\/p>\n
PennDOT still has some items on its checklist before the new bridge is ready for prime time.<\/p>\n
District 11 Executive Jason Zang pointed out the cranes and excavators, still hard at work behind him, which will pour impermeable polyester polymer concrete on the bridge deck no later than Friday. Work on the approaches to the bridge was \u201crapidly progressing\u201d as well, he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, workers were repairing the driving surface of the outbound Squirrel Hill Tunnel \u2014 one of the miscellaneous projects PennDOT had planned to knock out while it had the opportunity.<\/p>\n
While the Parkway East\u2019s reopening timeline continues to move up, Commercial Street will still most likely remain closed until Aug. 3, Zang said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus right now is the Parkway,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the new Commercial Street Bridge now bolted in place, PennDOT is sure the Parkway East will open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-778700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}