04-08-2025
Inspection work coming to the Roberto Clemente Bridge for the next two weeks
The inspection parade of Pittsburgh's sister bridges moves on as the Roberto Clemente Bridge will be closing for two weeks starting Monday morning.
The bridge will be closed for routine inspection work, following the recent closure and inspection of the nearby Andy Warhol Bridge.
The Warhol Bridge reopened to traffic ahead of schedule on Friday after two weeks of intense inspections. The report on the inspections isn't expected to be ready for a month.
"If there's any issues that are critical, they let us know right away so we can get those addressed, and they found no issues with the bridge," said Allegheny County Public Works Director Stephen Shanley.
With the Warhol Bridge inspection in the rearview mirror, eyes now turn to the Clemente Bridge.
"They'll be pulling hatches off the roadway and on the curbside and doing the inspection of the entire structure," Shanley said.
Like the Warhol Bridge, the hatch plates have a lot of bolts and iron workers have been hired to expedite the the process of opening those hatches so that inspectors can put a ladder down in the hatches and look around for any deficiencies.
The inspection work takes two weeks because of the large number of plates.
"There are a total of 432 plates," Shanley said. "We have 216 on the roadway side and 216 on the sidewalk side."
The plates on the sidewalk side have six bolts each for a total of 1,296 bolts. The plates on the roadway side have an additional bolt for a total of 1,512 bolts.
That's 2,808 bolts that have to be removed for the inspectors and then replaced, so the bridge will be closed through Friday this week and again next Monday through Friday.
The bridge will be open for this weekend's Pirates-Reds series before closing again next Monday morning.
