City to rebuild problematic Bates Street bridge

Shuttle driver Joanne Glinski passes a problematic bridge at the intersection of Bates… Shuttle driver Joanne Glinski passes a problematic bridge at the intersection of Bates Street and Second Avenue nine times a day on her routes.

“Not a day goes by that a truck doesn’t get stuck there,” she said, reflecting on her two years driving shuttles. “Nine times out of 10, that’s the cause of congestion, unless [the Parkway East] is backed up.”

The Bates Street bridge is a notorious traffic problem that causes tie-ups that can sometimes stretch for miles. Drivers of standard-sized, 13-feet-6-inch tractor-trailers, often realize too late that they can’t make the 11-foot-6-inch clearance and subsequently scrape the top of their vehicles. But after decades of commercial vehicle accidents, the city expects to replace the battered bridge this summer.

Using $3.6 million of city, state and federal funds, the city will replace the old railroad bridge with a taller, wider bridge, said Chuck McClain, the city’s project manager for bridges and structures. The new bridge will accommodate the proposed Mon/Fayette Expressway into Oakland — and 17-foot-6-inch tall trucks.

Bridge construction was supposed to start this spring, but conflicting requirements of two federal funding sources pushed back the construction. McClain said in a follow-up e-mail that he hopes construction will begin in mid-summer.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built the bridge in the early 1900s, and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy converted it for pedestrian use near the end of the century.

The city acquired the bridge from PennDOT about 20 years ago, and because car drivers don’t use it, officials don’t give it high priority, McClain said.

“If the bridge was not part of the Mon/Fayette Expressway, I doubt if we would be replacing it,” he said.

The Mon/Fayette Expressway is a part of a larger project commissioned by the Pennsylvania Turnpike that will connect Pittsburgh with Morgantown, W.Va.

The new bridge will also help alleviate rush-hour traffic on Bates Street because its proposed design allows for five lanes of traffic, compared to the existing three lanes. There will be two lanes leading into Oakland and three exiting Oakland.

On both sides of the bridge, there are dented steel beams that were once shielded by concrete. White paint lines show where trucks traveling down Bates Street scraped the bridge.

Tom Barnes, a shuttle driver with 10 years of on-and-off commercial vehicle driving experience, sees about two trucks get stuck under the bridge each week.

“As you can tell by the overpass, trucks have been can-opened a whole bunch of times. Aluminum going against steel. Someone is going to lose,” he said.

Before Barnes became a shuttle driver, he helped repair “can-opened” trucks. He said it cost between $20,000 to $30,000 to drill out the rivets and repair one of the trucks in the 1990s, when he worked on them.

Though a truck might be saved after scraping a bridge, a driver’s record typically can’t be repaired.

“They really want guys with clean driving records. If you make one big mistake like tearing a top off a tractor, you’ll be out on the street,” he said.

City police officer Ray Kain, who investigates vehicle accidents, sympathizes with truckers who have a run-in with the bridge.

“The bad part of [driving] a tractor-trailer, if you haven’t driven one, is you can’t feel what’s going on,” he said.

Yellow signs warn truck drivers of the low clearance on both sides of the bridge. On the Bates Street side, in front of the old railroad bridge, there’s another bridge more than 20 feet tall that vehicles traveling down the Parkway East can use. Kain said drivers might assume the signs denoting an 11-foot-6 inch clearance are incorrect when they see the Parkway.

“I think it’s even marked a little extra,” he said, referring to the sign on the Boulevard of the Allies that notes the clearance 1,200 feet before the bridge.

Barnes disagrees.

“They should have that much more marked — perhaps something flashing. That’s a steep hill. If you’re in the wrong gear, it’s very hard to get that geared down. Breaks won’t do it,” he said. “If you got a full load on you, you’re not stopping with breaks. You’re not stopping. You’ll turn them to jelly.”

Barnes said the problem is more driver error than signage.

“It’s usually a rookie that doesn’t know the area and is day-dreaming,” he said.

These inexperienced drivers might mistake their heights, but an experienced driver wouldn’t have this problem.

“When you’re assigned a truck, basically it’s your truck until it breaks down,” he said.

Clayton Boyce, spokesman for the American Trucking Associations in Washington D.C., agreed truck drivers typically work for companies, grocers or manufacturers and drive the same routes. Many truckers work for independent contractors who send them into unfamiliar areas.

Trucking companies use special GPS units made by Qualcomm and PeopleNet to help warn truckers about low bridges and tunnels, as well as weight restrictions and steep hills that aren’t safe for commercial vehicles.

McClain said truck designs grew larger over the past few decades, but the bridge’s clearance was a problem even before truck heights increased after World War II.

When a truck gets stuck under the Bates Street bridge, sometimes it takes hours to pry the truck out and causes a few miles of traffic congestion.

Bob McGann, a partner in McGann and Chester Towing, said a lot of that time involves unloading the truck’s cargo and deflating tires. If a truck can’t back out immediately, the city of Pittsburgh contacts McGann and Chester — which has a contract with the city — to help get trucks unstuck.

In these situations, police help direct traffic, but there doesn’t seem to be an accurate record of truck accidents in the area.

Jim Struzzi, spokesman for PennDOT, and Tom Jacques, an officer from the city’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit, estimated two to three truck mishaps there each week.

David Pritt, safety press officer for PennDOT, found five accidents in PennDOT’s records in the last five years. The fact that only major accidents are reported to PennDOT explains the low number of accidents.

“It’s pretty sporadic from what I gather,” Pritt said, sounding surprised when heard the City’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit estimated two to three accidents per week at the location. Pritt’s search found that truck drivers were cited three times in 2004 and 2006 for violating a traffic code, which requires “obedience to traffic-control devices.” One other citation was for “careless driving,” and in 2007, a driver involved in an accident wasn’t cited.

Glinski said she usually doesn’t see police on the scene when a truck runs into the bridge. She added that she tries to leave the area before traffic at the intersection worsens.

She wonders why truckers continually try to go under the bridge. Her theory was that truckers might expect the posted clearance to be lower than the actual clearance to account for snow on the road.

McGann, the tow-truck professional, said the advertised clearance at the bridge offers a little leeway, but the difference is inches, not feet.

“Yeah, they don’t make it,” he said with a laugh.