PennDOT to install wrong-way signals
Estimated $4 million project aims to reduce crashes on Route 28
Of the dozens of projects that PennDOT anticipates beginning in Allegheny County this year, one aims to use newer technologies to address an ongoing issue on Route 28 — wrong-way traffic, and the crashes that result.
Beginning this summer, PennDOT will begin work on a wrong-way detection system on the state road between Pittsburgh and Harmar. Officials say the project is estimated to cost $4 million and is scheduled to finish by late fall of 2025.
The system will include sensors, detectors, signs and lights that will automatically activate to alert motorists that they are traveling the wrong way down Route 28. It also will send notifications to PennDOT’s Western Regional Traffic Management Center. Controller boxes, fiber and electrical components, cameras, lighting and signs will be installed within the department’s right-of-way.
There have been multiple instances of wrong-way crashes on the state road in recent years. Police charged a 31-year-old Pittsburgh woman with multiple offenses in June 2022, after she drove a Honda Odyssey minivan northbound in the southbound lanes and hit a Ford Taurus sedan head-on near the Millvale exit. At least seven children in the Odyssey and two adults in the Taurus were taken to local hospitals for treatment.
In April 2017, two 24-year-old women from Coraopolis and Indiana, Pa. died in a wrong-way crash, and in February of the year before, an 81-year-old man from Millvale died after crashing near the 40th Street Bridge while driving his car southbound in the northbound lanes.
Senior PennDOT officials for District 11 — the region that covers Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties — announced more details of the project at a news conference last week. PennDOT District 11 Executive Jason Zang called wrong-way motorists and crashes a “hot-button issue” while describing the project.
Stephanie Zolnak, the district traffic engineer for District 11, told reporters that a similar system is in place in high-occupancy lanes on Interstates 279 and 579 — but the project on Route 28 is different because it’s not part of a closed system and will target a long stretch of roadway.
Flashing lights and other components to alert drivers that they’re headed the wrong way are essential parts of the technology and will hopefully prevent them from entering the highway off of exits between Pittsburgh and Hamar, she said. The system will also help to alert drivers who are approaching a wrong-way driver, she said.
“We want to give people more information to maybe avert another crash,” Ms. Zolnak said.