Many of Port Authority’s South Hills riders will face delays indefinitely because of a drainage problem that has limited the Mount Washington transit tunnel to outbound traffic.
A faulty sewer drain owned by the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority is causing drainage to flow down a city-owned hillside. Dirt, rocks and debris from the hillside have fallen twice in the past week, limiting the authority’s use of the tunnel.
“There’s an ongoing problem with drainage from Paul Street on Mount Washington,” said Port Authority spokesman Adam Brandolph. “We will not be fully reopening the tunnel until our engineers can review the hillside and we are sure it is safe to do so.”
Jake Pawlak, senior manager for public affairs at PWSA, said the agency is working with the city and Port Authority to correct the problem as soon as possible. He said city crews are in the process of removing trees and other vegetation from from the hillside so the sewer authority can repair the line, but he didn’t know how long that might take.
“We’re prepared to move quickly once we can get in there,” he said. “We should be able to make the repairs in short order.”
For now, Port Authority will continue running inbound light rail vehicles on the normally dormant Allentown line, which adds time to each trip and then makes outbound trips run late.
In addition, inbound light rail vehicles on the Allentown line don’t stop at Station Square. The authority is running shuttle buses from Station Square to the First Avenue station for riders who normally ride inbound from there.
Buses that use the transit tunnel follow their own detours inbound.
Outbound vehicles are using the inbound side of the tracks.
The authority also ran into an additional problem Wednesday morning when a tractor-trailer broke down and blocked the Allentown route for about a half hour. Mr. Brandolph said the agency used inbound tracks through the tunnel until that problem was cleared.
Overall, the situation is creating “an inconvenience” for riders. Many of them are familiar with the detour delays because the agency has had to use the Allentown line about a half dozen times in the last two years due to a Norfolk Southern train derailment and repairs to tracks in and around the tunnel.
“It’s unfortunate, but thank goodness we have the Allentown line,” Mr. Brandolph said. “If it happened anywhere else on the system, we don’t have a replacement.”
The authority is keeping track of its additional costs, Mr. Brandolph said.
First Published: January 8, 2020, 10:19 p.m.
