Pittsburgh’s Herron Avenue Bridge reopens

Four months after closing it for structural problems, Pittsburgh reopened the Herron Avenue Bridge on Monday between Polish Hill and Lawrenceville.

The city closed the bridge on May 27 after inspectors found problems with the condition of support columns. Jacob Williams, spokesman for the city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, said emergency repairs included clearing away loose and spalling concrete, confirming the extent of deterioration of the piers and installing temporary supports on two of the piers.

The total cost of the work was about $86,000. The bridge carries about 4,500 vehicles daily.

The city said both lanes of the bridge and the western sidewalk would be open without restrictions. A news release said the structure “has been deemed safe for normal operation with no load restrictions.”

The bridge is open now, but the city is in the midst of three years of preliminary engineering for a preservation project on the bridge with construction expected to begin in 2028. It’s not clear whether the emergency work will change the scope of the preservation project.

Initially, the project was expected to include replacing expansion joints and bearings, repairing a concrete barrier, improving the steel superstructure and concrete piers and substructure, installing new lighting and replacing a retaining wall. The project is complicated because the bridge passes over the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway and tracks used by four railroads.

The preliminary cost estimate was $3.5 million.

In addition to regular traffic, Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s 54-North Side-Oakland-South Side bus route will resume using the bridge. The agency had announced last week that the detour due to the bridge closure would become the permanent route Oct. 19, but spokesman Adam Brandolph said the agency will immediately resume using the bridge now that it has reopened.