Andy Warhol Bridge undergoing inspection work for the next two weeks
In a city that's so dependent on bridges, when one gets shut down, it gets everyone's attention.
The Andy Warhol (Seventh Street) Bridge was recently closed for Picklesburgh, but this time, it's going to be closed for a structural checkup.
"There is no problem," said Allegheny County Public Works director Stephen Shanley. "We're performing a routine national bridge inspection on the structure."
Despite undergoing a major renovation that just wrapped up a few years ago, inspections are still required and the construction of Pittsburgh's "sister bridges" makes that process challenging because the inspection has to be done through hatch plates.
"There's 439 of these hatch plates the have to remove," Shanley said. "They're all bolted down and they have to remove all these bolts."
Each of the hatch plates have eight bolts, which makes for a total of 3,512 bolts that need removed to reveal the lower girders and then need put back into place.
"What you see up top is what they're looking at down below, inside these hatches," Shanley said.
Crews will be working all this week through Friday, reopen or the weekend, and then shut it all down again next week.
Shanley says it's the safest way to get the inspection done and with the Roberto Clemente and Rachel Carson bridges right next door, the detour alternatives are easy.
The Carson bridge was inspected earlier this summer, but the Clemente Bridge shutdown is yet to come.
The good news is that since both bridges were just rehabilitated and they didn't find anything during the Carson Bridge inspection, they don't expect to find any problems on the Warhol or Clemente bridges, either.
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