PA: Upgrading PRT's Panhandle Bridge from South Side to Downtown Pittsburgh will cost $58 million

Pittsburgh Regional Transit is expected to award a $58 million contract next week to upgrade the Panhandle Bridge between Pittsburgh’s South Side and Downtown, but the work won’t start until next year.

The agency’s Performance Oversight Committee recommended Thursday that the full board award the contract to Mosites Construction Co. when it meets March 27.

The work — which includes improvements to the bridge’s substructure and masonry, tracks, lights and electrical work as well as painting — won’t begin until next year because of the agency’s limited capital funds.

Upgrading the bridge used by light rail trains is a complicated project because it provides the only access to the Downtown area from the South Hills. Plans call for crews to work on one side of the two-lane bridge at a time and keep the other side open for alternating traffic, which is expected to add a few minutes to each trip.

In addition to maintaining traffic, PRT and the contractor will have to coordinate work with other agencies because the bridge crosses the Monongahela River, two sets of railroad tracks, city streets and the Parkway East.

Most of the work will be at the deck level of the bridge or below, but steel preservation work above the tracks may have to be done overnight when there isn’t any traffic on the structure.

There also could be weekend closures next year.

Construction is expected to last through 2028.

The agency has been gathering federal, state and local funds for several years to upgrade the bridge, which opened in 1903 as a railroad bridge.

It has been rated in fair condition since 2004 and hasn’t had a major upgrade since it was acquired in the early 1980s to allow the agency to extend the former trolley system from the South Hills into Downtown as the light rail system.

At just under 3/4ths of a mile, it is one of the agency’s longest and most important structures. When the bridge has been closed for emergencies such as an inspection after it was struck by a runaway barge, PRT has operated shuttle buses from Station Square on the South Side to Downtown.

PRT’s spending on capital projects is limited because, like many transit agencies across the country, ridership hasn’t recovered since the COVID-19 pandemic and emergency federal funding has been spent.

After the state Legislature failed last year to increase the subsidy for public transit, Gov. Josh Shapiro allowed agencies to use capital funding for operating expenses over the next two years to avoid drastic cuts in service and layoffs.

As a result, PRT moved the start of the bridge work to next year.

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