PITTSBURGH, Pa. (PTTP) – – One of Pittsburgh’s most used bridges has its ramps closed for construction. The Highland Park Bridge, serving 37,000 vehicles every day, is having the ramps that connect to Sharpsburg and Aspinwall temporarily closed by PennDOT for planned construction.
The Highland Park Bridge serves the northern part of Pittsburgh, allowing traffic along route 28 to cross the Allegheny and enter the Highland Park District, Stanton Heights, and go along Negley straight to Bloomfield. For those crossing northbound, it connects through ramps to Sharpsburg and Aspinwall. Unfortunately, these ramps are getting closed for construction through May. While Motorists can still use parts of the ramp to get onto the bridge, those using the connection to get to Aspinwall and Sharpsburg are out of luck.
The suggested detour for those traveling south is to go through Fox Chapel Road to get to Freeport for the connection to the bridge. However, Freeport is a two-lane road used to accommodate 12,000 daily vehicles, and the new traffic will need to squeeze onto the road with those already using it. This is already causing heavy traffic, dipping into stop and go at the busiest times.
And Northbound, the recommendation is to take the North 8 ramp and go towards Sharpsburg Main Street. In addition to the added pressure from the Northbound traffic, Main Street Sharpsburg has been going through its own construction between sixth and eighth streets. This will need to be navigated as part of the detour.
The Sharpsburg closures are part of a 3.8 million dollar public works project expected to last through the end of March. In addition, the PennDOT project comes as part of its reworking of the Highland Park Bridge interchange, a project that started last year.