After plenty of patch jobs and other Band-Aid solutions to a slow motion landslide underneath Old William Penn Highway, Penn Hills officials are reckoning with the fact that a full-blown repair is the only option.
“I am a little fearful we might not be far away from having to close,” said Scott Shepard, superintendent of public works for the municipality, as U.S. Rep Chris Deluzio, D-Aspinwall, toured the site Oct. 17.
After a brief gathering at the government center, Deluzio and a few other Penn Hills officials traveled to a sagging stretch of Old William Penn Highway. One lane has dropped by about 6 inches, with the subsidence starting to creep over the median line.
If the road sinks into the hillside, drivers will lose a connection to the Parkway East and the Sri Venkateswara Temple, a Hindu temple in Penn Hills that attracts worshippers from throughout the eastern suburbs.
“The grant was a godsend,” Shepard said. “All we could do was kick the can.”
In March, Deluzio secured $800,000 to fund the repairs. Penn Hills put up a $200,000 match.
The grant came as Community Project Funding, which allows lawmakers to support critical infrastructure and service needs in their districts. Deluzio, who represents the 17th District, landed 15 of these grants totalling nearly $16 million early this year.
“We have old bridges all over our district. We have old roads. We have a lot of needs,” Deluzio said. “This federal infrastructure money is making a big difference, but it won’t be enough for the next decade.”
The $1.2 trillion in federal spending authorized by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will dry up in fiscal year 2026. Without another injection like this, infrastructure funding once again could become scarce for local governments.
But in Penn Hills, officials aren’t worried about that yet. Smiles abounded during the check presentation.
“We’ve been waiting to get this done,” Mayor Pauline Calabrese said. “This is truly like Christmas Day for us.”
Without the grant, the project may have required a significant trade-off somewhere else in the budget.
Old William Penn Highway has been a thorn in the side of Penn Hills for some time, appearing as an unfunded priority in past capital improvement programs. According to Manager Scott Andrejchak, PennDOT handed over the road to local crews at some point, though he is not sure exactly when or why.
Shepard recalled that, about 10 years ago, “it got a little rough, so we came in with our own manpower and paved this one lane.”
“A year later, it really starts dropping,” he said.
The municipality’s in-house engineering firm, Gateway Engineers, later determined the issue to be a landslide that would get worse under the weight of more asphalt, according to Shepard. Public works crews have mostly left it alone since.
The exact scope and cost of remediation will partly depend on the results of recent boring samples.
Any leftover funds will be used to pave down to the intersection with Jefferson Road, though Andrejchak noted it’s likely remediation will take the most of the grant. The project is expected to take a year or so of planning and last into 2026.
A closure, whether caused by further slides or construction, likely would send more traffic to nearby residential streets as well as the Parkway East.
Shepard said best case, the culprit is bad fill, and crews can just replace 15 to 20 feet of dirt.
Worst case, there is something more structural such as mine subsidence at hand and a retaining wall will be necessary.
“This my general argument for the federal government doing infrastructure more than once a generation,” Deluzio said. “Very few municipalities can keep up with all this.”
Deluzio’s visit comes during the waning weeks of his reelection battle with Republican candidate state Rep. Rob Mercuri, R-Pine, in a race the Cook Political Report rates as leaning Democrat.
The 17th District comprises parts of western, northern and eastern Allegheny County, as well as all of Beaver County.
Voter registration data in Beaver County has trended Republican for years, while Allegheny County has remained solidly Democratic.