In wake of Pittsburgh bridge collapse, motorists cite mounting concerns over potentially looming disasters

Chad Leichliter is a big fan of bridges — well-maintained ones, anyway.

The 41-year-old Jeannette electrician traverses dozens of spans of all sizes on a typical workday, sometimes hauling up to 10 tons with his equipment truck and trailer.

“I prefer my bridges not to collapse when I drive over them, though,” Leichliter said only half-jokingly, referencing the catastrophic failure of the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh’s Frick Park. “I’m an electrical contractor, so I have an eye for different mechanical things, and I see deterioration and corrosion all over the place. It’s such a big issue.”

Hundreds of smaller, less visible bridges than Fern Hollow carry local thoroughfares over streams, creeks and railroad tracks. They have the same “poor” rating as the Frick Park bridge did, with some rated even worse.

“I just try not to think about it; I just drive,” said Cindy Olbeter, 44, a New Kensington graphic design production worker by day who moonlights as a newspaper delivery driver with routes throughout the Alle-­Kiski Valley.

She was surprised to learn about several dilapidated bridges lingering on repair wait lists that line her nightly routes.

“It’s a warning call to bridge managers across the United States that they have to work fast to repair bridges that are in poor condition before lives are lost in another bridge failure,” said Jeremy Herauf, CEO and owner of Oregon-based Bridge Masters Inc.. “The dire condition of bridges is putting people at risk.”

Among examples of local bridges in “poor” condition that are languishing on to-­repair lists:

• Route 28 over Yutes Run Road and Yutes Run Creek in Springdale Township;

• Route 366 over Pucketa Creek linking Lower Burrell to Plum and Murrysville; and

• Route 30 connecting East Pittsburgh Street to the Westmoreland Mall and Hempfield business corridor.

Last year, PennDOT replaced five Westmoreland County bridges and 20 others throughout District 12, which includes Fayette, Greene and Washington counties. Fourteen more projects are on track to advance this year, including Swede Hill Road/Route 3103 over Jack’s Run in Hempfield and Leger Road/Route 4019 over Norfolk Southern railroad tracks in North Huntingdon.

Nearly 40 other bridge projects are on track to go to bid in the coming months. Dozens of others linger on a longer-term priority list that PennDOT officials aim to complete by 2026 — including possibly demolishing and replacing the nearly 700-foot-long Salina Bridge/Edmon Bridge, whose pin-connected Parker truss structure that spans the Kiski River between Kiski and Bell townships was originally erected in 1906.

RELATED: Saving the Salina Bridge to be costly project

In Allegheny County, PennDOT completed a $3.4 million rehabilitation of the Tarentum Bridge, whose ramps that lead toward Riverview Memorial Park were deemed in “poor” condition even as the larger structure over the Allegheny River was in “fair” shape, state records show. Crews also advanced an $862,000 rehabilitation project on the bridge carrying Gibsonia Road/Route 910 over Deer Creek in West Deer.

Several bridge preservation projects are set to continue this year on regional highways, including repairs at Route 28’s RIDC Park exit in O’Hara and the span carrying Interstate 79 over Interstate 279.

Chris McClinton, 37, had no idea there is a bridge superstructure deemed in “serious” condition — a step below “poor” and a signal of “possible local failure” — at an intersection he crosses every day, where Route 982 meets Industrial Boulevard in Derry Township.

“I never really thought about it. I want to keep it safe, absolutely. It’s very high-trafficked. I wouldn’t think there would be a problem there,” said McClinton, a butcher who manages the Jameson Packing slaughterhouse just around the corner from the four-way intersection above Saxman Run creek.

The flagged structure beneath Industrial Boulevard — the main road linking Derry to Latrobe — is within a few miles of several trucking companies, churches, residences and a mix of commercial businesses, with a district judge’s office on one end and a gas station and vehicle repair shop on the other.

“They need to keep an eye on it, absolutely,” said McClinton, a Ligonier native who has lived in Derry for six years. “We need to make sure what happened in Pittsburgh don’t happen here, or anywhere.”

RELATED: Over 40 bridges in Alle-Kiski Valley are rated the same as span that collapsed in Pittsburgh

‘They’ll put a Band-aid on it’

Sahira Hudson, 27, a Greensburg mother of three children, ages 4, 6 and 7, cruises along the East Pittsburgh Street ramp at Route 30 on a regular basis and had no notion of its subpar rating. She was pleased to learn, however, that unlike many others in need of repair, the Route 30 bridge in Hempfield has been earmarked for a rehabilitation that could start as soon as this year.

“I didn’t realize that, and I pass that all the time running errands with the kids,” Hudson said while pumping gas a half-mile away from the poorly rated structure. “They need to take a closer look at all of the bridges, just to be sure.”

More than 15% of Western Pennsylvania’s bridges are rated in “poor” condition, including about 175 state- and locally owned spans in Allegheny County and about 140 in Westmoreland County, PennDOT records show.

“I would like to see them fix the ones that are really bad. They’re dummy-fixing them, and it’s just a hold. I see some and think that this is so rusted, how did it even pass inspection?” said Denise Malak, an administrative assistant from Lower Burrell. “How many people do (failures) have to kill to get it done?”

City Controller Michael Lamb concedes there are bridges within Pittsburgh that he didn’t know much about until receiving an invoice for repair work — such as Heth’s Run Bridge, a 215-foot span linking Butler Street to Washington Boulevard near the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium that was rehabbed in 2014.

“When you’re on it, until you really stop and look at it, you don’t even realize that it’s a bridge,” Lamb said. “We have a lot of those little bridges in poor condition — like one along the Parkway East right in front of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.”

Leichliter of Jeannette said he isn’t overly optimistic that government officials will fix the region’s ailing bridges expeditiously.

“They’ll do what’s cheapest,” he said. “They’ll put a Band-Aid on it. This is Pennsylvania.”

How ratings work

Even though a bridge that remains open is listed in poor condition, it doesn’t mean it is ready to collapse, several engineering and industry experts told the Tribune-Review.

“We do have a very rigorous process in place that we do to evaluate those bridges to make sure that they’re safe,” PennDOT acting Deputy Secretary Melissa Batula said. “Just because they say ‘poor,’ that doesn’t mean that there’s something significantly wrong with that bridge that is putting them in jeopardy.”

New bridges get rated 9 for “excellent” condition; bridges with minimal or no wear are rated 7 or 8; and bridges considered “fair” or “satisfactory” — with some signs of deterioration or minor loss or cracking — are rated 5 or 6.

Bridges that score a 4 or below on any element — deck, superstructure, substructure or culvert — get rated as “poor,” “serious” or “critical.”

“Bear in mind that these condition ratings are only used to generally categorize bridges and provide a global view for planning,” Batula said. “A bridge condition is just far too complex to be fully described within three condition ratings.”

RELATED: ‘Poor’ ratings don’t mean Westmoreland bridges are unsafe

Inspection ratings get reviewed by a structural engineer, who confirms the findings and also performs a load capacity analysis.

PennDOT then groups the bridges within time-urgency tiers, with some at Tier 1 priority requiring fixes as fast as within three days or six months, and others being put off for long-term projects.

If more serious deterioration is found, authorities will limit the amount of weight the bridge carries by restricting heavy vehicles or traffic.

Such decisions can have ripple effects on nearby residents, as well as the routes of fire trucks and tractor-trailers.

“We’ve had communities who’ve been shut off because their bridge went out, and that’s happened all throughout Western Pennsylvania,” Lamb said.

In dire situations, a bridge could be closed. That happened in Unity two years ago, when Norfolk Southern Railroad flagged problems serious enough that it advised Unity officials of the need to close a bridge permanently. Port Authority of Allegheny County on Friday closed a bridge that carries the South Busway over Saw Mill Run Boulevard in Pittsburgh’s Mt. Washington neighborhood because officials said engineers discovered the bridge had shifted.

The 1,052-foot span, known as Palm Golden Bridge, is used by buses and the light rail system and had been rated “satisfactory” as recently as October 2020, inspection records show.

RELATED: Unity bridge closure to become permanent with PUC approval

Public safety issue

Bridge projects often get pitched with the goals of improving transportation and economic development.

Former Gov. Tom Corbett — who made passing a bipartisan $2 billion transportation package a key piece of his agenda in 2013 — said the impetus to take immediate action boils down to protecting people.

“Good roads and good bridges are public safety,” Corbett said. “And if you don’t have public safety, you don’t have a government worth beans.”

Under Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration, PennDOT has rolled out a $900 million Rapid Bridge Replacement Program, using public-private partnerships that Corbett said can help save money and improve safety by utilizing contracts that rely on outside contractors to maintain bridges for coming decades.

Corbett said government officials also should be taking advantage of innovations and technology that could extend the typical lifespan of bridges and make it more cost-effective to inspect them.

At just over a half-century, Fern Hollow Bridge’s age at the time of its collapse was in line with the majority of bridges in the region.

“If you’re replacing a bridge, make it last more than 50 years,” Corbett said. “And get more inspectors out there to check them more often.”

Most bridges get inspected at least every two years, with some older or lower-rated bridges inspected more often, according to PennDOT. The state performs about 18,000 bridge inspections a year, or about 70 each weekday, Batula said.

The state is faring better than localities at maintaining bridges.

Herauf of Bridge Masters cites several ways to thwart bridge failures, including more frequent cleaning and inspections; being careful not to overload bridges with asphalt overlays; swapping salt-based deicers with sand or magnesium chloride; and fixing relatively minor problems before they get bigger, costlier and more dangerous.

About 1,200 state-owned bridges suffer from deteriorating conditions, down from more than 6,000 that were in bad shape as of 2008, according to PennDOT. About 1 in every 8 bridges still is in need of repairs, but that’s down from 1 in 3 bridges deemed to be in such poor shape a decade ago.

“We’ve made tremendous progress in reducing that number,” Batula said.

The pace has varied over the years.

In 2009, for instance, PennDOT improved or preserved 1,336 bridges, partly through a one-time infusion of federal stimulus dollars. But by 2012, the number of bridges improved dropped to 657.

Issues flagged at Fern Hollow Bridge deemed “high priority” in an inspection report five years ago would have cost about $1.5 million, state and federal records show. National Transportation Safety Board officials on Monday released a brief initial report about the cause of the collapse but will spend months to more than a year examining what went wrong before issuing their final report.

“Despite its poor score, officials had done nothing to improve the bridge. The last time significant maintenance took place was when a new deck surface was added a few years ago,” Herauf said. “If officials had acted on the knowledge they had about the bridge sooner, the collapse may have been averted.”

Still, even after Pennsylvania uses up its $1.6 billion share of the federal infrastructure bill recently passed by Congress, there will remain a “large funding gap” between what’s needed and what’s available, according to Batula.

And it’s a constant race to keep up: About 250 more bridges get added to the “poor” condition category annually.

“So we must preserve, repair and replace at a greater rate each year to continue our trend of reducing the number of bridges that are in poor condition,” Batula said.

RELATED: ‘It’s a resource problem’: 1 in 8 bridges in Pa. rated in ‘poor’ condition