The numbers that Pittsburgh consultant WSP Inc. has put together estimating the funds the city needs to care for its 146 bridges are stark: $471.6 million over the next 32 years.

That includes $135.4 million for nine bridges that need immediate work, $276.3 million for 98 bridges that need extensive work by 2039, and $59.4 million for long-range projects that should be completed before 2056. Additionally, the city should start spending at least $9.65 million a year on routine bridge maintenance to reduce deterioration, the consultant said.

The good news is that the routine maintenance money is budgeted for the first time this year and the city has shown renewed participation in the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, which serves as the clearinghouse for federal funding to support the city’s immediate needs and prepare for future projects.

The city hired WSP shortly after the Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed in January 2022 to give new Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration a full rundown of the city’s bridge needs. Fern Hollow had been rated in poor condition for more than 10 years before the collapse, but the city had done little to obtain funding to fix it.

The consultant has prepared five reports for the city over the past two years, including assessing immediate needs and recommending an in-house bridge division, which didn’t exist before. The Union Progress obtained the most recent reports on the city’s overall bridge needs and yearly maintenance requirements through a Right to Know request.

Eric Setzler, the city’s chief engineer, said the numbers are huge, but they aren’t a surprise. The city has been “very aggressive” in working with SPC and the state Department of Transportation to move immediate and major projects forward, he said, and nine projects have been recommended for inclusion in the June’s Transit Improvement Program, which SPC updates every two years.

“I think it’s fair to say we’re more involved in that process,” Setzler said. “SPC and PennDOT have been great partners in moving these projects forward.

“That way of taking a project from early design to construction is a multi-year process. We have a lot of projects in the very early stages right now.”

The most immediate project is the Charles Anderson Bridge that carries the Boulevard of the Allies from Oakland into Schenley Park and has been closed since last March. After a special appeal from Gainey, the city worked with SPC to cancel emergency repairs and move a full rehabilitation project into the funding stream earlier than expected.

Final design won’t be done for six months, the bids on the work are due before the end of the month and construction should start before the end of the year.

Setzler noted that at the recommendation of PennDOT the city added the replacement of another small bridge known as Panther Hollow Overpass to the project. The bridge also has problems and it makes sense to upgrade it at the same time rather than interrupt traffic again in a few years, he said.

Both projects could cost as much as $50 million total.

The Swindell Bridge, which crosses above Interstate 279 to link Pittsburgh’s Perry South and Northview Heights neighborhoods and has been closed twice in the past year for emergency repairs, has been under design since last summer. It is scheduled for a $13.7 million rehabilitation that will include rehabilitation of the truss, cleaning, painting and replacement of the deck.

The other seven projects proposed for the new TIP in priority order are:

Davis Avenue Bridge over Woods Run, $3.75 million replacement; Swinburne Bridge over Saline Street in lower Oakland, $26.1 million replacement; 28th Street Bridge over the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway in Polish Hill, $10 million rehabilitation; parking lot bridge over Saw Mill Run Boulevard at Woodruff Street, $1.5 million demolition; West Carson Street bridge over Chartiers Creek, $7.9 million replacement; Bloomfield Bridge, $36.5 million preservation.

Overall, WSP cited 37 bridges in need of high priority work, but some of them were recommended for work after 2026.

Setzler said the city is taking steps to move along other proposed projects by engaging consultants to design small groups of bridges. For example, one consultant will do the Maple Avenue Bridge over North Charles Street on the North Side and the Corley Street and Calera Street bridges over Streets Run on the South Side while another is doing the Elizabeth Street Bridge in Hazelwood and the Herron Avenue Bridge in the Strip District.

Design should begin in a couple of months with construction expected in about three years.

The maintenance recommendations also are key, Setzler said. Before Fern Hollow collapsed, the city had spent about $700,000 annually on routine bridge maintenance, far below WSP’s recommendation of $9.65 million.

This year, Setzler said, the city has budgeted just over $9 million for maintenance, such as cleaning drains, spot painting and other improvements that can extend the life of bridges. With a $900,000 carryover from the previous year, he said, the city should be able to do the recommended work.

Additionally, the city is expanding its in-house bridge maintenance crew, so it should be able to do some of that work at a lower cost with its own employees in future years, he said.

Inspection reports from Fern Hollow criticized the city for ignoring repeated recommendations for routine work like cleaning drains, which led to serious deterioration of steel components.

“These kinds of maintenance projects will slow down the deterioration process and prevent problems before they become bigger issues over the years,” Setzler said.

View the full article at unionprogerss.com.

The National Transportation Safety Board won’t officially determine until Wednesday why the Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed two years ago, but state, local and federal officials already have made a series of changes about how bridges are inspected and maintained.

Those include the state updating inspection procedures to better flag bridges with evidence of continuing deterioration, Pittsburgh expanding its division that oversees bridge maintenance and hiring a consultant to recommend maintenance schedules and prioritize work on the city’s 147 bridges, and adding federal recommendations about how states care for bridges made with uncoated weathering steel such as the old Fern Hollow structure.

The changes are all interim steps agencies and officials have taken after Fern Hollow — it had been continuously rated in poor condition for more than 10 years — collapsed from Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill into Frick Park underneath it about 6:40 a.m. Jan. 26, 2022. Nine people were injured when six vehicles, including a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus, fell into the ravine.

The NTSB will release its findings Wednesday, but in many cases, officials didn’t need to wait for the final cause to know changes should be made.

Nearly 6,000 pages of investigation documents released by the NTSB last month include inspection reports on the bridge over more than 15 years, transcripts of interviews with front-line bridge inspectors and contractors, reports from state and local officials charged with monitoring the condition of bridges across the state, and technical reports from experts who examined the ruins.

NTSB investigators collected the information as part of their effort to reach a definitive conclusion on why Fern Hollow collapsed.

The documents also outline procedural changes agencies have made as a result of shortcomings identified during the two-year investigation.

“I’d say [Pennsylvania Department of Transportation] has done a really good job of taking the lessons from the collapse and the federal government, too,” said Roberto Leon, a construction engineering professor at Virginia Tech University who has followed the bridge investigation.

“The speed with which these changes have occurred testifies to the importance of this failure. Turning around a big ship only happens when you have a big problem.”

At the state level, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation issued a “technical bulletin” on Nov. 22, 2022, to the agency’s 11 maintenance districts. That 31-page document outlines a series of changes in how inspectors should review more than 26,000 bridges and how state officials should handle those completed inspections.

Michael C. Kaiser, acting deputy secretary for highway administration at the time but now retired, wrote that the bulletin was developed after the Fern Hollow collapse following an “in-depth review” of its procedures. Although the bridge is owned by the city of Pittsburgh and inspections are frequently done by private engineering firms, PennDOT reviews those inspections and files them with the Federal Highway Administration.

As a result of the review, the agency made a series of procedural changes designed to collect and report the best information about the condition of bridges, and then present it in inspection reports so that state oversight engineers who review them can easily determine whether additional action should be taken. With Fern Hollow, field inspectors had identified deteriorating conditions over more than 10 years, but they never changed the condition rating or called for a review of the 26-ton load limit on the bridge.

Those deteriorating conditions included holes in support legs growing from about 2 inches by 2 inches to about 12 inches by 12 inches, among other problems.

PennDOT reviewers, who could have asked questions or called for more work based on what was in the reports, instead routinely approved them. In an August 2022 interview with NTSB investigators, Rich Runyan, assistant chief bridge engineer, said he considered it unusual that the department didn’t question inspectors.

“It is surprising to see, you know, comments, sketches, a number of things in the report pointing to increased — and noting increased deterioration — and yet that never crossed over to the load rating, is very surprising,” Runyan, who is now the department’s chief engineer, told investigators.

“… To go several inspections and note the increased loss and that not result in a new load rating is one of the head scratchers, in my opinion, of this whole thing. That never — nobody in that chain of, you know, whether it be our reviewers or the city, or even, you know, the inspectors didn’t see that as enough to populate new numbers and possibly lower the [weight limit] posting.”

As a result of the Fern Hollow incident, the department changed a series of inspection policies immediately with the technical bulletin.

Those changes include conducting a load review every 10 years even if conditions haven’t changed appreciably; requiring photos, detailed sketches and precise measurements showing areas that have deteriorated, including measuring the thickness of the remaining metal; and brushing away rusted areas to show the actual condition of the remaining metal.

“Such cleaning and documentation of section losses is essential in determining the load carrying capacity of bridges, tunnels and other structures and to the decision-making process for maintenance recommendations to maintain safety of highway systems within the Commonwealth,” the bulletin said.

In addition, inspection reports — they can run hundreds of pages — now must have a summary sheet on the front identifying changes from the previous report so that oversight engineers can quickly identify whether a bridge might need additional attention.

The new requirements will be part of a new Best Practices Load Rating Manual that is under development.

Kent Harries, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, said more thorough inspection reports are only valuable if agencies have the resources to follow their recommendations.

“Certainly, more detail is better detail, but what good is it if the resources aren’t there to do the work?” he said. “This is the issue. [The U.S.] left things go for a long time. You have to prioritize bridges to take care of the worst ones first.”

The Fern Hollow incident was a rude welcoming for Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration, occurring less than a month after he took the oath of office.

The early morning collapse focused a spotlight on serious problems with a series of major bridges among 147 the city owns. For years, the city had done minimal work on many of its bridges, to the point where last February it closed the Charles Anderson Bridge that carries the Boulevard of the Allies into Schenley Park until it can be rehabilitated.

Almost immediately after Fern Hollow, the city hired engineering consultant WSP Inc. to evaluate all of its bridges, determine what work was needed and prioritize which projects should be done first. The consultant also looked at routine maintenance needs for the bridges because recommendations for routine items at Fern Hollow such as cleaning drains and repairing holes never were performed.

Last March, the consultant identified 66 bridges that needed high-priority repairs over the next two years at an estimated cost of $11.7 million.

For major rehabilitation work such as Charles Anderson, the city also has started working more closely with the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. That agency reviews road and bridge projects for a 10-county area to set priorities for federal funding, but the city hadn’t pushed the agency for help for more than a decade.

That renewed relationship led to SPC working with the city to fast-track the estimated $48 million Charles Anderson rehabilitation, which hadn’t been scheduled for major work yet despite being rated in poor condition since 2012.

The city also has beefed up the staff for its bridge division in the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure. In 2023, the city hired three engineers, including a chief engineer for bridges and structures, a bridge maintenance supervisor and a project manager.

This year’s budget calls for adding a bridge maintenance foreman and three bridge maintenance workers.

The Fern Hollow Bridge that collapsed was built with uncoated, weatherizing steel, which will form its own protective layer known as patina if it goes through wet and dry periods. Investigators learned early on that despite repeated inspection recommendations to clear drains to allow the bridge to dry, the city left the drains clogged, and the protective layer never formed, leading to deterioration that contributed to the collapse.

Investigators reviewed reports on 10 other uncoated bridges in Pennsylvania and found that problem wasn’t unique to Fern Hollow.

As a result, in May 2023, the NTSB issued an interim report on Fern Hollow that recommended owners of about 10,000 bridges that used weatherizing steel across the country pay special attention to proper drainage. It called on the Federal Highway Administration to develop proper procedures for state departments of transportation to provide the best care for those bridges.

The FHWA’s Joseph L. Hartman, director of the office of bridges and structures, issued those recommendations in July.

“FHWA continues to work closely with the NTSB to support its investigation of the January 2022 Fern Hollow Bridge collapse in Pittsburgh and will work expeditiously to address any recommendations NTSB issues to ensure the safety for all our nation’s bridges,” the agency said in a statement last week.

View the full article at unionprogress.com.

This year’s class of 30 Under 30 honorees has been selected.

30 Under 30, which the Business Times presents in partnership with Leadership Pittsburgh Inc., honors young professionals who are exhibiting strong leadership and making a difference in their organizations and communities early on in their careers.

This year’s class of honorees will be honored in a special edition of the Pittsburgh Business Times on April 19. Check back for more details about each of the honorees, which will be released in the weeks to come.

This year’s honorees are:

[…]

Lillian Gabreski, manager of sponsored programs development, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission

[…]

View the full article at bizjournals.com.

The Pittsburgh Power 100, a listing of the region’s most influential business leaders, is being presented by categories this year. Here are Catalysts.

They stand at the intersection of research, job training and economic development. Their schools and organizations lure investment and partnerships. They are helping to build the workforce of the future and the leaders of tomorrow.

Jenn Beer

President and CEO, Leadership Pittsburgh Inc.

Jenn Beer has led Leadership Pittsburgh Inc., the region’s foremost leadership development and networking organization, since June 2022. Leadership Pittsburgh offers three different cohort-based annual leadership training programs and has served the region for over three decades — its alumni network is made up of over 3,000 influential leaders, with LPI also providing a board matching service to help alumni land board service positions with local nonprofits. Prior to joining LPI, Beer spent 15 years with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, most recently as vice president for government affairs, doing work that contributed to the 2022 announcement that the state of Pennsylvania would be gradually lowering its corporate net income tax, making Pennsylvania more attractive for potential business investments. In addition to her role at LPI, Beer serves on the boards of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, Local Government Academy, Latino Community Center and Trying Together.

[…]

View the full article at bizjournals.com.

The Power 100, a listing of the region’s most influential business leaders, is being presented by categories this year. Here are Connectors.

Connectors are everywhere. They are the often behind-the-scenes players who drive business decisions and whose influence extends well beyond their given industries.

Rich Fitzgerald

Executive Director, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission appointed Rich Fitzgerald as its executive director in November 2023 — a role he assumed in January. He brings a wealth of leadership experience to the federally certified metropolitan planning organization. Following his 12-year tenure as Allegheny County executive, Fitzgerald now oversees the strategic growth of the region through collaborative planning and decision-making. By leading the SPC, he will direct a team of 50 staff members across seven departments that are focused on economic and workforce development, transportation planning, strategic initiatives and others. His connections with stakeholders throughout the region mixed with his extensive executive leadership background, including founding a water treatment services company prior to his stint as county exec, position Fitzgerald as a key player in shaping public investment plans and programs. Throughout his career, Fitzgerald has prioritized economic diversification, infrastructure investment and improving public services, emphasizing his commitment to the region’s prosperity.

View the full article at bizjournals.com.

Economic development tends to happen when different counties within a region help one another by sharing assets, while investing in infrastructure and education, according to Rich Fitzgerald, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

These topics among others were discussed Wednesday, Jan. 31, when the Pittsburgh North Regional Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual legislative breakfast event, where Fitzgerald and Matt Smith, chief growth officer of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, spoke to a crowd of chamber members at The Chadwick, 10545 Perry Highway.

“The good things we have in this region are the diversity of industries,” Fitzgerald said. “I think building upon all those assets we can continue to grow and make this a place where our young people want to stay.”

Fitzgerald took the podium first, and quickly pointed to education as one of the region’s greatest assets.

According to the most recent data from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, Butler County posted a 3% seasonally adjusted jobless rate, the lowest in the region.

Similar figures were seen in the surrounding counties; however, Fitzgerald said he sees over 40,000 job openings on employment website Indeed in the 10 county region he serves, which includes Butler and Allegheny counties.

This is why he advocates for continued investment in community colleges.

“What I think we have is a great community college system,” Fitzgerald said. “BC3 is one of the best community colleges. Acquiring skills there is a lot cheaper than our four year institutions, and you get the skills you need to get the jobs that you need. We want to make sure we invest in that.”

With education comes jobs, a majority of those coming in the manufacturing sector, according to Smith.

“We have been a region that has always made things,” Smith said. “We think that continues with advanced manufacturing. We have that history of manufacturing, but we are not resting on that legacy.”

Other sectors Smith said he believes are a staple of the region includes health care, energy, and robotics and technology.

Manufacturing has had a major footprint in the area for a long time, Smith said, which has spurred development in the robotics and technology sector in Pittsburgh, along with some of the most established technology universities in the country.

“We have the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, two tier one research institutions within 1 square mile of each other,” Smith said. “That is a massive advantage. These tech companies want to be in the same area of the universities because that’s where the talent is.”

Smith said technology companies such as Amazon, Honeywell and Apple, who all have offices in Pittsburgh, tend to rely on the manufacturing businesses within the region for parts. Fitzgerald said the next step is to retain those workers and make sure they stay in the region.

“When you see Steelers fans on TV waving Terrible Towels during away games, you see all those people who left for Denver or Charlotte and so on,” Fitzgerald said.

Creating a better quality of life through transportation is one way to keep those people within the region, Fitzgerald said, which is part of what he and others work on at the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

“One of the things we are working on is the widening of Route 228,” Fitzgerald said. “There are some pinch points near the Mars area, and that’s investments we can make because if people can’t get to their jobs and customers can’t get to them, it impedes economic growth.”

The event offered a reminder there is still a lot of work to be done to keep the region growing and thriving, but it also served as a way to acknowledge what has already been done so far.

“What I am bullish about is the way we have a bright future,” Fitzgerald said. “What we’ve got to do more of is build upon our strengths and our assets. What we have done is create a lot of jobs that are there right now.”

View the full article at cranberryeagle.com.

Economic development tends to happen when different counties within a region help one another by sharing assets, while investing in infrastructure and education, according to Rich Fitzgerald, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

These topics among others were discussed Wednesday, Jan. 31, when the Pittsburgh North Regional Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual legislative breakfast event, where Fitzgerald and Matt Smith, chief growth officer of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, spoke to a crowd of chamber members at The Chadwick, 10545 Perry Highway.

“The good things we have in this region are the diversity of industries,” Fitzgerald said. “I think building upon all those assets we can continue to grow and make this a place where our young people want to stay.”

View the full article at butlereagle.com.

For U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a news conference in Swissvale Friday was about more than a $142.3 million grant to improve the Parkway East and Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway, among other projects in the eastern suburbs.

“This is about people,” said Lee, a Democrat who grew up a block away from the news conference site along the busway. “It’s about jobs. It’s about quality of life.

“We’re setting the stage for prosperity and growth.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was at the news conference to celebrate the federal grant, which will fund a series of local projects grouped together and submitted by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission as the Eastern Pittsburgh Multi-modal Corridor Project.

The local grant was among 11 chosen for funding from 117 applications. Buttigieg said the awards were based on a series of criteria, including easing congestion, safety, creating jobs, reducing pollution and improving under-served communities. He described those projects that received funding as “the best of the best” and called the Biden administration’s $1.2 trillion economic stimulus package a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“This opportunity is one we’ve been waiting for our entire lives and then some,” Buttigieg said. “Now, we have to deliver.”

Overall, the grants will provide 60% of the cost of the projects, which means the overall spending on the work will be $237.2 million. The remaining money will be provided by the state Department of Transportation and other federal sources.

Jason Zang, PennDOT’s district executive, said the projects that the agency will oversee are in various stages of design. He said he expects the first one to move forward will be the retaining wall in the area of the Parkway East in Downtown Pittsburgh knows as “the bathtub.”

Like the Mon Wharf, that 600-yard area floods before the river reaches flood stage at Point State Park, closing the westbound lanes of highway for about 100,000 motorists who use it daily.

That complicated work, most of which will have to be done while maintaining traffic, should begin in 2026, Zang said.

U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Aspinwall, who shares parts of the project area with Lee, called the federal support “a pretty great piece of news.”

“Folks are going to save time and money because transportation is better,” he said. “That’s what impacts our lives every day.”

Rich Fitzgerald, the former Allegheny County executive who became president and CEO of the 10-county regional planning commission earlier this month, said he expects the agency to develop more grant applications for large projects. Former CEO Vincent Valdes, who retired at the end of the year, started that effort to combine projects from several agencies into one grant request during his 3½ years there.

“You’re going to see more of these,” he said. “That infrastructure bill money is going to be here for a while.”

Here is a financial breakdown of the work that was first announced last month:

• Creating a traffic control system on the Parkway East between Monroeville and the Squirrel Hill Tunnel to ease congestion and reduce accidents ($94.7 million).
• Building a bus-only lane on the shoulder of the parkway from Monroeville to Edgewood, where it will join the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway ($44.7 million).
• Controlling slopes to eliminate landslides, paving and upgrading 10 bridges along the busway ($54.2 million).
• Installing a larger retaining wall to control flooding in “the bathtub” ($33.3 million).
• Traffic control measures and other improvements on secondary highways that feed the Parkway East ($9 million).
• Filling sidewalk gaps along about 5,000 feet of Business Route 22 in Wilkins and Monroeville ($1.2 million).

View the full article at unionprogress.com.

“’The bathtub’ is not just an obstacle to overcome, it’s a warning sign,” Buttigieg said. “It’s a warning sign that it is long past time to upgrade the entire corridor to be more resilient against the climate crisis.”

The grant includes additional funding to reduce traffic, prevent landslides and avert accidents along I-376, which Buttigieg said carries 44,000 drivers per day.

“I-376 Parkway East Corridor is one of the oldest urban interstates in the U.S. and, frankly, it’s showing its age,” he said. “It is badly congested for about 12 hours every day.”

The funding comes from a $5 billion new Department of Transportation initiative called “The Mega Program” that was created through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to fund especially complicated projects. The Pittsburgh-area project is one of 11 across the country to receive funding this round. More than 100 communities applied for the grants.

Buttigieg’s trip to Pittsburgh also included a morning stop at Carnegie Mellon University where he spoke with students studying in Safety 21, a CMU-based collaboration with five other universities funded by the Department of Transportation that is devoted to transportation safety issues. He answered questions about a range of issues, including the impact of autonomous vehicles, equity in bridge construction and new safety regulations at Boeing.

The federal grant also includes money for five electric buses and improvements for passengers along the MLK Jr. East Busway, including a mile of sidewalks that will connect transit stops to communities.

“And to anybody who thinks things like sidewalks or bike infrastructure is just ornamental or nice to have, I want to stress they are an investment in safety as we combat the crisis of roadway deaths in this country,” Buttigieg said. Earlier in the day at CMU, Buttigieg emphasized how even a 1% decrease in road fatalities across the country would be the equivalent of preventing one or two Boeing 737s from crashing.

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee said she used to live on the street in Swissvale along the MLK Jr. East Busway where Buttigieg spoke Friday. Lee said the new investments would prevent accidents, deter traffic and save workers’ time.

“Every moment counts for a workforce who has to calculate with specificity how much time it’s going to take them to get to work and to commute every day,” she said.

View the full article at wesa.fm.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is scheduled to visit Pittsburgh on Friday to announce a $142 million federal funds for the city’s infrastructure.

He’s expected to join federal, local and state leaders, including U.S. Sen. John Fetterman and U.S. Reps. Chris Deluzio and Summer Lee to celebrate the investment, which aims to improve infrastructure on the Interstate 376 corridor, officials said in a news release.

The federal dollars will go to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission to fund rehabilitation of 10 bridges along the I-376 corridor of Pittsburgh.

It also will help cover costs of a new flood wall in Downtown Pittsburgh to fix flooding problems in an area known as “the bathtub,” which is prone to emergency closures. The project seeks to improve traffic management and reduce costly recurring maintenance in the flood-prone area, officials said.

The funding comes from the INFRA and Mega grant programs, funded through President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, which the president announced Thursday in Wisconsin.

Buttigieg also is expected to participate in a town hall focused on the next generation of transportation infrastructure with Carnegie Mellon University students.

View the full article at triblive.com