The University of Pittsburgh won't allow a few orange-and-white construction barrels to mess up plans for what it hopes will be a good inaugural season at Heinz Field.
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The Boulevard of the Allies is closed outbound and limited to a single lane inbound between Downtown and Oakland during road reconstruction.
Liberty Bridge repair work will stop on days that the Steelers have home games but there will be partial closures, either inbound or outbound, during Pitt home games against East Tennessee State on Sept. 1, South Florida on Sept. 8 and possibly Syracuse on Oct. 13.
"This year should be pure pleasure for fans compared with what they had to endure with construction last year," university travel manager Vince Johns said, a reference to all of the North Shore construction work that took place at the same time as the Interstate 279 bridge through Point State Park and four blocks of Fort Duquesne Boulevard were closed.
Instead of using the Parkway East as an alternate route to and from Oakland, university officials will route 50 chartered buses for students via Liberty Avenue, the Bloomfield Bridge and Bigelow Boulevard.
The drop-off and pick-up point will be along Fort Duquesne Boulevard, on the Downtown side of the Roberto Clemente/Sixth Street Bridge, converted to a pedestrian-only bridge, "where the Pitt party begins," Johns said.
Because Pitt students, faculty and staff are covered under a special Port Authority ride program, they also can also ride regular buses and stadium shuttle buses for free with their Pitt IDs.
Last year when Pitt played its home games at Three Rivers Stadium, as many as 5,000 students rode Pitt charter buses to a game (against Penn State). The Port Authority's shuttle and express buses registered a total of 5,098 rides over the season.
Pitt's game-day shuttles will begin leaving Oakland three hours before kickoff and conclude "when all the kids have left the stadium," Johns said. "The system worked well last year."
For the most part, Pitt's overall plans for transportation, special access, parking and traffic control otherwise mirror the Steelers' plans, except the parking at publicly-owned lots will be lower. Parking that costs $24 a game for Steelers games at 2,688 prime North Shore spaces will cost $8 a game for Pitt games.
The overall strategy, however, is to get as many people as possible to park Downtown, where parking authority-owned garages charge $3, and to walk or take Port Authority shuttle buses to Heinz Field.
The Port Authority will operate five suburban routes from Century III Mall, the Ross park-and-ride lot, Monroeville, the Ohio Valley and South Hills Village. Shuttles costing $1 each way will operate from Station Square, Strip District, Mellon Arena and the Beaver Avenue park-and-ride lot. For more information, go to www.ridegold.com
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