The Monongahela Incline may reopen by Saturday’s Light Up Night, but even if it does, Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s $8.1 million upgrade of the facility won’t be complete.
PRT spokesman Adam Brandolph said the agency is “hopeful” that the few remaining mechanical upgrades to the incline between Mount Washington and Station Square can be finished and the system passes state inspection this week. Aesthetic elements to return the incline to its 1870s roots have been completed, Brandolph said, but supply chain issues have delayed some of the mechanical work on the project.
“It’s not guaranteed [that the incline reopens by Saturday], but that is certainly our goal,” Brandolph said. “If there are any issues that come up during the week, we have to have time to address them.”
The incline is the oldest continuously operating funicular in the country and carries about 600,000 passengers in a normal year between Grandview Avenue on the top and East Carson Street on the bottom.
Warm weather the past few weeks has allowed general contractor Mosites Construction Co.’s team to catch up after supply problems delayed some of the work, Brandolph said. The public may see test runs of the incline cars during the week, but the final decision to operate for Light Up Night won’t be made until after the state inspection.
“There are just certain things we can’t operate before testing,” Brandolph said. “Some things are coming down to the last week, but we are remaining hopeful.”
If the incline isn’t available for Light Up Night, Brandolph said, the agency will try to run extra shuttle buses to and from Mount Washington for the event. That will depend on the availability of drivers because that is considered extra service provided by drivers who are on voluntary overtime.
Even if the incline is open by the weekend, the rehabilitation project won’t be finished. The work calls for replacement of a backup generator in case there is a power outage while the incline cars are traveling up and down the hillside, but the new generator ordered in February isn’t expected to arrive until December.
As a result, crews reinstalled the previous backup generator on a temporary basis. Brandolph said the system likely will have to be closed for another week in January to allow installation of the new backup and the completion of several other small items.
This work is the second phase of a project that began in 2015 with the reconstruction of the passenger cars and replacement of two rows of track, each 635 feet long.
To restore the look of the incline, crews installed new floors with a diamond pattern popular when it opened in 1870, wrought iron railings and period lighting in the upper and lower stations to replace the red tiles, brushed aluminum and LED lights.
On the mechanical side, crews replaced sheaves that crank the cars up and down the hillside, improved and added computerized equipment to operate the system, and installed a new system to make daily adjustments to the length of the cables pulling the cars required by changing weather conditions.
New computerized LED lights that can change color by season or for events have been installed, but the equipment to operate them may not be ready by Saturday.
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.