Explosive demolition of Parkway East Commercial Street Bridge rescheduled for Thursday

UPDATE: The demolition has been rescheduled. You can read the latest updates here.

The previous story is below. 

The explosive demolition of Pittsburgh's Commercial Street Bridge has been rescheduled for Thursday morning. 

PennDOT announced on Tuesday that crews were set to blow up the Interstate 376 bridge on Wednesday, weather permitting. However, after giving an eight-hour window, PennDOT rescheduled the demolition shortly before 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday. 

PennDOT says the explosion will only happen after crews and emergency personnel have cleared the blast radius on the ground and in the air, making sure everything is safe. 

Residents should anticipate a loud sound and additional dust afterwards, though they can go about their day normally, PennDOT says. 

Crews are blowing up the bridge in between the Squirrel Hill Tunnel and the Edgewood/Swissvale interchange to make way for the new bridge that has been built beside it. Once the old bridge is gone, workers will slide the new bridge into place. It'll be one of the largest lateral side projects performed in Pennsylvania, PennDOT said. 

During this work, part of the Parkway East will be closed through Aug. 3. While a 25-day closure may seem inconvenient, conventional construction methods would have required about four years of work. PennDOT says this one-and-done closure is preferable to years of squeezing parkway traffic to one side and enduring continuous lane closures and restrictions.

Traffic will be detoured during the closure, and drivers can look at real-time updates of how traffic is flowing online.