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 — and potentially earlier.
PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said the agency has made a “commitment” to the new timeline thanks to the project’s quick progress.
“(We’re) striving to do even better than that, if we can make it early next week,” he said.
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.
Carroll deemed the bridge’s demolition and subsequent sliding maneuver — overseen by Dutch subcontractor Mammoet — the most impressive bridge project he had ever seen.
“I am not a civil engineer, but you do not have to be one to appreciate what has already been accomplished here,” he said. “With thousands of people watching the livestream cameras, we have all witnessed firsthand what I consider a stunning engineering achievement.”
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’s transportation infrastructure, Carroll said.
They also have plenty of incentive to complete the $95 million project ahead of schedule. The contractors stand to earn their maximum bonus — $2 million — if the bridge opens before 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday.
Carroll wouldn’t 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.
“A delay from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. is not as impactful as a delay from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m.,” he said.
Carroll was clear that contractors weren’t 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.
“We don’t want to set a schedule that overstates our ability to deliver,” he said.
That principle held on Wednesday; Carroll said PennDOT would not officially announce a reopening date until after this weekend’s forecasted storms.
PennDOT still has some items on its checklist before the new bridge is ready for prime time.
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 “rapidly progressing” as well, he said.
Meanwhile, workers were repairing the driving surface of the outbound Squirrel Hill Tunnel — one of the miscellaneous projects PennDOT had planned to knock out while it had the opportunity.
While the Parkway East’s reopening timeline continues to move up, Commercial Street will still most likely remain closed until Aug. 3, Zang said.
“The focus right now is the Parkway,” he said.
