Skip to main content

PennDot opens bids on completing I-79/Parkway West Interchange

....thirty years later.

PennDot opened bidding on the construction of two "missing" ramps at the I-79/Parkway West (I-279/US 22/30) interchange (Exits 59A-B) in suburban Pittsburgh. I say "missing" because these ramps were not planned for in the original construction of the highway in the 1970s. The missing ramps are from I-79 South to US 22/30 West and US 22/30 East to I-79 North. Construction should start this fall and the ramps should open in 2009.

When the interchange was constructed in the early 1970s, I-79 actually was planned to actually take the ramp from I-79 onto the inbound Parkway West (I-279 North). I-279 would continue straight on what is now I-79 North today. But that changed when I-79 and 279 switched alignments in 1972. Anyways, the thinking at the time was that connections from I-79 South to the Airport and from the Airport to I-79 North could be done via PA 60 -- then a rural two lane road -- and connecting at what is now Exit 60. The hope was that PA 60 would be upgraded to at least a four lane divided highway or even a more limited access highway. Well, that along with many other highway plans for Pittsburgh never happened.

So thirty years later, a major freeway to freeway interchange is incomplete. Until 2009, that is. The interchange will become a three level stack interchange as the new ramp from US 22/30 East to I-79 North will fly over both highways. Also -- and you don't hear this at all in Western PA -- US 22/30 will be widened from four to six lanes from the I-79 interchange to the newly rebuilt Campbells Run Road intechange. A total of 1.6 miles. (For Pittsburgh, that's impressive.) I do not know as it's been years since i have traveled it, but I think that with the widening US 22/30 will be six lanes from I-79 to the PA 60 interchange (another incomplete interchange). But I may be mistaken about that.

Here's the story in Friday's Post-Gazette:

Commentary:

Although relatively small, this is an important improvement to Pittsburgh's highway system and the airport corridor. Since the early 1990's, the corridor has seen the completion of the Southern Expressway (A Freeway PA 60 connecting to the new airport terminal), there have been numerous upgrades to PA Business 60 (The old airport parkway), The West Busway, the Findlay Connector scheduled to open sometime in October 2006, and now completion of the I-79/Parkway West ramps. You gotta take what you can get.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two