WASHINGTON — It’s known as the bathtub, that section of Interstate 376 alongside the Mon Wharf and the Monongahela River that has been prone to flooding since the highway was built almost 70 years ago.
Now the federal government is taking steps to keep the water out.
President Joe Biden traveled to Wisconsin on Thursday to announce $5 billion in federal funding for 37 infrastructure projects, including $142.3 million for improvements to I-376 through Pittsburgh, nearby highways and the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway.
The work includes installing a new flood wall to keep the water away from I-376, rehabilitating 10 bridges, improving parts of South Braddock Avenue and U.S. 30/Lincoln Highway/Ardmore Boulevard, filling in the missing sections of sidewalks along U.S. 22 Business in Wilkins and Monroeville, and making bus infrastructure improvements.
The project also includes variable lanes and speed limits, systems to detect wrong-way traffic, and other technologies designed to reduce what the Department of Transportation says is a higher-than-average number of crashes on the Parkway East in this area.
Pittsburgh officials announced last month that the money was coming, and Thursday’s visit by Mr. Biden to a key swing state in the 2024 presidential election provides another way to highlight the funding under the president’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.
Pennsylvania is another swing state, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is scheduled to travel to Pittsburgh Friday to highlight the federal funding for the Parkway East project. He’s also scheduled to hold a town hall with Carnegie Mellon University students to discuss the next generation of transportation infrastructure.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, said in December that the project would create more than 2,500 jobs, add $254.9 million to the local economy and prevent hundreds of crashes annually.
As the region marks the second anniversary of the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge in January 2022 — which occurred just hours before Mr. Biden arrived in Pittsburgh to tout his infrastructure proposal — U.S. transportation officials also highlighted the repairs to 10 bridges along the I-376 corridor.
Mr. Buttigieg said these bridges aren’t “cathedrals” like major spans such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but they’re just as important to the motorists who use them.
“For bridges that maybe don’t show up on the national Top 10 list but mean everything to the commuters who count on them every day, we have funding to improve things through this infrastructure package,” Mr. Buttigieg said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters.
Overall, 3,022 — or 13% — of Pennsylvania’s 23,257 bridges were rated as deficient, the sixth-highest percentage in the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration. That’s 100 fewer deficient bridges than a year earlier.
Jonathan D. Salant: jsalant@post-gazette.com, @JDSalant
First Published: January 25, 2024, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: January 26, 2024, 6:37 p.m.
