Dry weather allows PennDOT to make major roadwork progress this year

Farmers and gardeners may not be happy with near-drought conditions in Western Pennsylvania, but those conditions bring a smile to people who do road and bridge construction.

“PennDOT doesn’t mind a drought. We were able to get a lot of work done,” Jason Zang, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s district executive for Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties, told a news conference Tuesday.

PennDOT called the news conference at a construction staging area at the Interstate 79 interchange with Route 60 in Robinson to recap about $440 million of work under contract in the district this year. Zang and Douglas Thompson, assistant district executive for construction, said the agency put 53 projects out to bid this year. That included 741 miles of paving and road maintenance, 39 bridge improvement projects that included nine bridges in poor condition and 39 landslides.

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration has been holding news conferences across the state to tout repairs to more poorly rated bridges than any state in the country and improvements to more than 4,100 miles of roads.

Zang and Thompson said the dry weather allowed crews to make more progress than expected on many projects, especially two projects to improve Interstate 79 between the Parkway West and the Neville Island Bridge. Ramp work on a $43.9 million project between Neville Island and Moon Run was expected to continue next spring, but favorable weather allowed most of the work to be finished this season.

As a result, PennDOT has made major upgrades on I-79 from the Parkway West to Interstate 279 in the past five years.

Other projects that will finish this year include improvements to the New Kensington Bridge across the Allegheny River, Allegheny and Westmoreland counties ($29.4 million); Business Route 22 in Wilkins and Monroeville ($23.9 million); Freedom Road in Beaver County ($21.75 million); and I-79 in Lawrence County ($11.6 million).

Major projects that continue next year include the replacement of the Commercial Street Bridge on the Parkway East in Squirrel Hill ($95 million); Parkway East from Churchill to Route 48 in Monroeville ($70.2 million); Boulevard of the Allies ramps in Pittsburgh ($44.9 million); McKees Rocks Bridge ($38.6 million); McKnight Road between Pittsburgh’s North Side and McCandless ($25.5 million); and I-79 from Campbell’s Run Road to Moon Run ($15 million).