Trail work in 3 areas stymies Pittsburgh cyclists
Pittsburgh bicyclists who have taken advantage of warmer weather this past week have found that no matter where a wheel turns on the Three Rivers Heritage/Great Allegheny Passage trail system, there is a roadblock.
Going north on the Three Rivers Heritage Trail along the Ohio River, bikers were halted by a major Alcosan project that forced them off the trail short of the old Western Penitentiary.
Going east toward McKeesport, cyclists have been stymied at the stretch of trail in Baldwin Borough known as Eagle Lake. Work is underway there to correct a drainage problem that turns the trail into a deep, wide lake after storms.
And those who transported their bikes around that work and began cycling in West Homestead were stopped about a mile farther east by “Trail Closed” signs behind the Waterfront Apartments and Townhomes in Munhall.
Two of those projects, though, are nearing completion.
By Dec. 31, Alcosan plans to be finished with core borings along the North Side trail as part of the construction of its Ohio River
Tunnel. It’s one of three 150-foot-deep tunnels the utility is building to capture wet weather combined sewer overflows and move them to its nearby treatment plant.
The work began in mid-October. Signs direct bicyclists to short detours on streets in the city’s Marshall-Shadeland neighborhood.
And the Eagle Lake work, according to updated information last week from Friends of the Riverfront, said it might be done by the end of November, a few days earlier than the original Dec. 2 finish date.
The project has stopped bicyclists cold — with CSX Transportation railroad tracks on one side of the trail and private property on the other, there is no viable detour around it, so riders must turn around at the construction site.
Riders who have tried to skirt the project by walking their bikes along the railroad tracks have been turned back by construction workers, who are installing a pipe beneath the trail that will drain water into the Monongahela River.
But the big surprise was the closing of the milelong stretch of trail behind the Waterfront Apartments and Townhomes in Homestead and Munhall.
That section of trail has been closed part of this month so a contractor can prepare it for paving in the spring. When the work is done, it will mean that the entire trail from Pittsburgh to just outside the Boston section of Elizabeth Township will be paved.
The work has been a long time coming.
Jerry Green, president of the Steel Valley Trail Council, says the laying of asphalt will be the culmination of a plan the council hatched at least five years ago.
“The trail got soupy in the spring — really, anytime it rained hard — so we got the idea that we should pave it,” Mr. Green said.
Initial estimates were less than $100,000, he said, so the trail council, a volunteer
group that maintains a 9mile stretch of the GAP from Pittsburgh’s Hays neighborhood to McKeesport, started looking for money. The council got some foundation and other backing, but it hit the jackpot when the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources got involved. To get state money, however, meant following state guidelines.
“It had to be up to their engineering standards,” Mr. Green said. That meant environmental and other studies the trail council hadn’t planned on. With those requirements came delays, and then COVID-19 struck and state reviews and approvals slowed down for the
better part of two years.
Mr. Green said the project became overwhelming for his small council, so they turned it over to the Regional TrailCorporation, which had a staffer who could devote time to it. The RTC is a nonprofit partnership that acquires, develop sand manages trail corridor sin southwestern Pennsylvania.
The RTC has hired an engineering firm, Senate Engineering, of Pittsburgh, to oversee the work.
With upgrades and delays, though, came cost increases — Mr. Green estimates the work now will approach $600,000.
The contractor is doing preliminarywork, including grading, drainage and widening that part of the trail to 10 feet for its entire course. “If it can be safely done, we hope the trail will be open for walkers during the winter construction break,” he said.
Paving is set for the spring, when asphalt plants are back in operation, and that section of trail will be closed for about a week. Walkers and cyclists can use Waterfront Drive and its sidewalk as bypasses now and during the spring paving, Mr. Green said.
When the work is done, “It means your bike will stay cleaner, this heavily used segment of the trail will be safer, and we hope it will be more attractive for the trailthrough riders from Washington, D.C. Now, for some reason, some of them stop at Boston. We hope to give them a pleasant ride into Pittsburgh.”