3-month detour at Highland Park Bridge starts Monday

Traffic headed north on Route 28 for the Highland Park Bridge will face nearly three months of detours beginning Monday while crews work on the exit ramp to the bridge.

The work is part of the 2½-year, $47.3 million project to rebuild the Route 28 interchange at the bridge with new exit lanes to allow two lanes of free-flowing traffic in each direction.

Crews for Golden Triangle Construction plan to close the exit ramp in Sharpsburg about 3 a.m. Monday for 83 days while they replace expansion dams and bearings, repair concrete, improve drainage, fix steel, blast and paint the ramp, and place an epoxy overlay on the deck.

Traffic heading north on Route 28 rather than crossing the bridge will continue to use one narrow lane that has been set up during construction.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is suggesting two detour routes for motorists who want to cross the bridge:

• Get off of Route 28 at Exit 5A (R.D. Fleming Bridge/Sharpsburg) and continue straight at the stop sign onto North Main Street, which becomes Main Street and then Freeport Road and take the ramp to the Highland Park Bridge.

• Continue on Route 28 past the closed ramp to Exit 8 (Fox Chapel Road/Waterworks Drive/ Freeport Road), bear left and then turn left on Fox Chapel Road, then turn left again onto Route 28 south to the Highland Park Bridge exit.

There likely will be additional ramp closures during the extended project. Work also is expected to include installing traffic lights where Freeport Road traffic merges onto the bridge to head south and on Freeport Road at the ramp just past Western Avenue in Aspinwall that takes traffic to a merge point on the bridge and then onto Route 28.