Commuters Relieved As Mon Incline Reopens After 13-Week Closure

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- It literally has been an up-and-down kind of day for the Mon Incline.

For 13 weeks, riders had to take a bus up and down the hill until today, or at least they thought they would be able to take the incline.

"I just tried to come here and get to work and I was hoping the incline was in service, but it wasn't quite," said Ian Fisher, of Mount Washington.

It was in service, but only for 50 minutes before a power outage from a quick spring storm pulled the plug again.

"The power doesn't go out too much up here, but I didn't know if it was specific to the incline," said Seth Storck, a commuter that takes the incline.

Adam Brandolph from Port Authoirty told KDKA the outage effected about 200 customers for about 90 minutes. The outage forced commuters to once again hop on the bus, which takes more time.

"It can be anywhere from 10-20 minutes, depending, especially if it's off hours, then it can be even more, I mean like 30 minutes," he said.

Seth is excited to know that things are getting back to normal.

"It was nice all week so I was like 'oh, I am going to use the incline today.' I got up and heard on the radio it was up and running for an hour and then here I am waiting for a shuttle again," he said.

All the brand-new pavement is in the area where the water mains have been repaired and they do believe that this morning was a different kind of water problem with a storm rolling through that knocked the power out the incline.

Everything is now back to normal.