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Construction On 3 Bridges Causes Driving Headache

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – It doesn't feel like spring, but there was a sure sign of it Monday.

Drivers found themselves staring at "road closed" signs on three area bridges.

Sure the warning signs have been there, but who really pays attention until suddenly the path before you comes to a sudden end?

"I was very surprised," one driver said.

From the Bellevue side and from Ross Township, drivers cruised to the sudden realization:

"It's confusing, you don't know where to go or how to turn," another driver said.

"I was expecting to get to the other side, I feel like the chicken," one person said.

Drivers doing 180-degree turns were wanting to cruise over the parkway north between Bellevue and Ross Township on the Levi Duff Bridge only to find it was closed Monday for a face lift. The summer-long detour on four wheels is 6 miles.

"The pedestrian traffic is going to be open the whole time," Mark Graff with GMT Engineering said.

This was also the day that the link between Ambridge and Aliquippa was severed again. The familiar scene from last summer returned for the second season of a two-year rehabilitation of the bridge.

Duquesne Light crews did prep work Monday for the demolition of the 117-year-old South Highland Avenue Bridge over the busway and railroad tracks. The span's steel is clearly crumbling. The closing means pedestrians will be hoofing it further. And businesses worry that their customers are being cut off.

"One of two months I think we could survive, but six months," Ginny Smiley of Smiley's Pet Pad said.

If everything goes as planned, the South Highland Bridge should reopen in mid-September, the Ross Bellevue Bridge by Nov. 1 and the Aliquippa Bridge around Thanksgiving.

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