Pittsburgh's Panther Hollow Bridge to reopen after nearly 2 years

It's been closed for nearly two years, but restoration of the Panther Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park has been completed.

The city held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday, announcing the bridge will reopen at 7 a.m. on Friday. 

The discovery of deteriorating trusses abruptly closed the Panther Hollow Bridge 22 months ago, but steady replacement work and $2.5 million later, it's ready to reopen Friday morning, going a long way to unsnarling traffic in the city's East End. It's good news, but still it's only a piece of the puzzle.

"This is a gateway into the East End, into Greenfield, into Squirrel Hill. This is something that is a major road artery that we need, especially when the Charles Anderson Bridge is being worked on for the next couple of years as well," said Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O'Connor. 

As KDKA's recent investigation revealed, work on the nearby Anderson Bridge connecting the Boulevard of the Allies with Schenley Park has been riddled with delays and is proceeding at a snail's pace. Closed three and a half years ago, it won't reopen until this time in 2028 at the earliest. And it is just one of 26 city bridges in poor condition, needing replacement or extensive renovations.

"It just takes way too long and costs go up when we do that," O'Connor said. 

The mayor says he wants to jump-start the work on these deficient bridges by changing state law to allow cities like Pittsburgh to work on several bridges at once instead of one bridge at a time.  

"The City of Bridges," O'Connor said. "We have so many that if we can start doing multiple at once, so when you're halfway completed with construction, if engineering can be done on the next one — I mean, just staying on top of it." 

And O'Connor says he's working with state legislators to allow that and hopes to be hosting more reopenings like this one.