PITTSBURGH — Residents of Pittsburgh’s Swisshelm Park neighborhood say they felt blindsided this week when they saw a road closure sign along Commercial Street that says the road will close starting June 29.
“This leaves us, like I said, disappointed and feeling disrespected,” Kurt Colborn said.
Kurt Colborn is a board member with the neighborhood group Swisshelm Forward. He says that, up until this week, PennDOT told Swisshelm neighbors that Commercial Street would only be closed for a day before the Parkway East completely shuts down from July 10 through Aug. 3 for the Commercial Street Bridge project.
“My understanding from the last meeting was that they were going to shut the road down for one day to do a test move on the bridge,” a 50-plus-year member of the community told Channel 11. “I came up Monday, and I saw the guys putting signs up that the road will be closed on the 29th.”
PennDOT now says this long-term, full closure of Commercial Street between Whipple Street and Summerset Drive will start Monday, June 29, and will last until Aug. 3.
“It’s basically a 50% increase in the amount of time. It was 24; now it’s 36, roughly,” Colborn said.
PennDOT says closing Commercial Street is crucial for prep work leading up to the bridge’s closure. The agency has only recently confirmed the exact date with the contractor, and that date was displayed on signs and digital message boards along the Parkway.
“We understand that things change and things happen, but nobody told us. We weren’t notified. When we started calling, we heard crickets,” Colborn said.
Residents say Commercial Street is their main connection.
“You want to go from Pittsburgh to Pittsburgh? This is it; this is all we got,” Colborn said.
Neighbors say they’re worried about what if there’s a crisis while the road is closed.
“There’s been a lot of concern about emergency services,” Colborn said. “We do have a fire station here, but there’s no ambulances, so there’s no police station here.”
Another neighbor added, “The concern is buses taking the kids to camp, people going to work, doctor’s appointments. You don’t want to come down here and find out you have to go through South Braddock Avenue, which is going to take you a heck of a lot longer to navigate.”
There are going to be a lot of detours during the construction, and PennDOT says it’s created an email distribution list specifically for the Parkway East. You can sign up by clicking on the Parkway East online sign-up form link and entering your email address.
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