HARRISBURG — Negotiations over the costs of replacing a deteriorating, railroad-owned bridge whose closure has disrupted traffic in the small borough of Swissvale are fueling a larger debate over state costs in taking over such bridges.
The Norfolk Southern-owned Washington Avenue Bridge in Swissvale was shut down for safety reasons last year. While pedestrians can still use the bridge across the railroad tracks, vehicular traffic has been rerouted in the borough, leading to longer response times in some emergency situations. Borough Council President Chris Ansell said that when the railway company offered to pay for building a new bridge Swissvale would own, local officials had reservations.
“We are talking millions and millions of dollars of future repairs and replacements,” Mr. Ansell said. “I don’t want to stick the borough with a multi-million price tag.”
Swissvale’s dilemma got attention in Harrisburg during a budget hearing in March, when newly elected state Rep. Abigail Salisbury — a former Swissvale council member — asked exactly how much state taxpayers are shelling out to replace former railroad-owned bridges. In response to written questions from the Post-Gazette, PennDOT supplied data showing the state spent more than $53 million over a 15-year period on costs of replacements for bridges once owned by railroads.
The vast majority of the money was spent on construction costs. And while nearly all of the 42 replacement bridges are owned by the state, a few are owned by municipalities, and one by a county.
Tim Joyce, chief of staff to state Sen. Jim Brewster, D-Allegheny, questioned that spending. He pointed out that PennDOT already has responsibility for about 25,000 bridges.
“We would prefer seeing the state tax dollars go into the existing state roads and bridges, rather than railroad roads and bridges,” Mr. Joyce said in an interview.
Sen. Wayne Langerholc, R-Cambria and chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said shifting bridge ownership from railroads to the public isn’t “necessarily the best way to go.” Mr. Langerholc said he’s concerned that bridges no longer owned by railroads might not be eligible for funding from the federal government.
The largest single state expenditure on the PennDOT list was the more than $10 million spent for the 2012 replacement of the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge — originally built in 1938 — in Beaver County. It also included $214,264 in state costs for the Kennmawr bridge project in Allegheny County in 2021. That was a fraction of the bridge’s overall cost of more than $2 million.
Todd Wilson, a transportation engineer and co-author of a book on Pittsburgh bridges, said replacing bridges presents public officials with complex challenges.
“Transportation is a system,” Mr. Wilson said. “If one thing goes down, there are a lot of impacts that will be felt throughout the system.”
Many railroad-owned bridges were built in the early part of the 20th century, when rapidly expanding use of cars and trucks collided with the demands of a rail network filled with freight and passenger trains.
“You can imagine the problems,” Mr. Wilson said.
About a century later, some of those bridges have aged to the point where replacement makes more financial sense than rehabilitation. Mr. Wilson said safety is always the top concern and “every situation is different.”
For the 2021 replacement of a railroad-owned bridge in Lehigh County, the state put up more than $700,000. Phil Armstrong, the Lehigh County executive, said the replacement of deteriorating railroad-owned assets sometimes forces public officials to make decisions quickly.
“You have to sit down and get the best deal,” Mr. Armstrong said. “You can be sitting down yelling back and forth at each other, and something collapses. I believe the job we have to do is get things done.”
In Swissvale, the Norfolk-owned Washington Avenue Bridge was originally built in 1907. Ms. Salisbury, who won election to the state Legislature in a February special election, laid out the bridge’s situation when she addressed the topic for a second time during a budget hearing in April.
“It was built pre-World War I, has not been maintained, is at the end of its useful life, and every time it rains pieces fall off of it,” Ms. Salisbury told Public Utility Commission leaders. “PennDOT closed it down and we are experiencing significant safety issues related to EMS response times and other problems associated with that in our community.”
Ms. Salisbury said she was told the state has a policy of transferring ownership of bridges in such situations to municipalities — and that costs incurred by those municipalities would be covered by the state. Gladys Brown Dutrieuille, the PUC chair, told Ms. Salisbury the agency’s role is simply to bring parties together, and the rest is worked out in negotiations.
Mr. Ansell, the Swissvale Borough Council president, said his top concern beyond safety is Swissvale’s long-term financial health.
“This doesn’t seem fair that we, as a small community, are being saddled with this bridge,” Mr. Ansell said. “It often feels like a David and Goliath example.”
Ford Turner: fturner@post-gazette.com
First Published: May 16, 2023, 2:04 p.m.
