PITTSBURGH — Only in Pittsburgh can a catastrophe that makes national news beget a Christmas tree ornament — 3,221 sold as of Tuesday for $10 each from handmade goods vendor Etsy, Inc.
Like the Sinkhole Bus of 2019, the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge in January spawned Pittsburgh-centric memes, including the handmade ornament depicting a miniature articulating bus being lifted out of a Frick Park ravine by a crane.
With its reopening Thursday, the Fern Hollow Bridge disaster joins the Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus that was trapped in a huge Downtown sinkhole in frameable prints, photographs — even doughnut toppings — all to laugh in the face of tragedy with a little yinzer pride.
Good humor notwithstanding, it’s a saga that those affected by the bridge collapse are more than ready to see come to an end. “It’s a relief,” said Jon McCann, chief executive officer of the Environmental Charter School, which has two elementary schools on Braddock Avenue near the bridge collapse. “Everyone is excited.”
For the school, already strained by a widespread bus driver shortage, “a bus ride that should have been really a 10 minute bus ride turned into a 40 minute bus ride, sometimes an hour,” said Mr. McCann.
The school tried to make the best of it, incorporating bridge design into classroom lessons where it could, and appreciating the fact that in some areas made less accessible by the collapse, there was actually less traffic.
A ceremonial ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday at the Regent Square side of the bridge with Gov. Tom Wolf and other government officials, 11 months after the opposite side of the four-lane bridge gave way, prompting a series of other structural failures that took five passenger vehicles and a 60-foot bus crashing into a Frick Park ravine about 100 feet below.
The bridge actually opened Thursday afternoon — a day ahead of schedule thanks to Friday’s winter storm. A special design-build strategy, made possible by state and local emergency declarations, shortened the reconstruction period by as much as four years, officials said.
Regent Square and Squirrel Hill have humming business districts that are among the most robust in the city, so the new traffic routes impacted trade in both communities that are linked by the Fern Hollow Bridge, with Regent Square seemingly more affected.
For Regent Square chiropractor Chris Powell, it was all about getting the new Forbes Avenue bridge open to traffic as soon as possible.
“My clients have had to drive a little further,” said Mr. Powell, owner of Chiropractic Wellness on South Braddock Avenue and spokesman for the Regent Square Civic Association, a business group. “We’re very much looking forward to that thing getting open,”
Other Regent Square business owners reported dented sales from the 11-month road closure. Moreover, two restaurants and a jewelry store closed since Forbes Avenue shut down with the Jan. 28 collapse, although it was uncertain whether the detour was a factor.
The detour forced motorists to find other ways of getting to Squirrel Hill from Regent Square and surrounding neighborhoods, which reduced foot traffic in the Square, said Gary Kaboly, co-owner of the 61C and 61B coffee shops in Squirrel Hill and on South Braddock Avenue.
“We lost a little bit, down 10%,” he said. “We lost the people who patronize the Regent Square corridor. There weren’t as many people walking and visiting those businesses.”
However, business was steady at Mr. Kaboly’s Murray Avenue store in Squirrel Hill throughout the bridge reconstruction, he said.
Other Regent Square merchants reported similar hits to business.
By late summer, foot traffic at Le Mix Antiques, a gift and home goods store, had slipped 20%, according to store owner David Knouse.
“The economy isn’t really great to begin with,” Mr. Knouse said. “It’s been tough.”
Farther down South Braddock, Jonathan Cohen, owner of Cohen’s Collectibles & More, said some customers were unwilling to take an alternate route to his store, cutting visits by 20% during the first couple months of the bridge closure.
“For people in Point Breeze and Squirrel Hill, it went for a two minute drive to 20 minutes — if you’re lucky,” he said. “At that point, you’re almost better off going to the Strip.”
Beer sales were the exception in Regent Square, where McBroom Beer Store, at the far end of South Braddock, near the Parkway East interchange, reported no impact on business. Sales were brisk throughout the bridge reconstruction, general manager Shane Rothrauff said.
“We stayed busy,” he said. “We got lucky there.”
Overall, businesses in Squirrel Hill seemed less affected than those in Regent Square.
“Of course it impacted daily life, making trips to restaurants a little bit harder at first,” said Jamison Combs, director of marketing for Uncover Squirrel Hill, a business association. “But the impact has been minimal, thanks to the fast reopening.”
Meanwhile, sales of the stainless steel crane tree ornament have been brisk, which Peters Township creator Audra Azoury said she began making at her home studio at the request of a dozen customers. She also markets a Sinkhole Bus tree ornament, modeled after the Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus that dropped into a huge sinkhole Downtown in 2019.
“That was a huge seller,” Ms. Azoury said.
Normalcy and advocacy
For residents like Christine Furman of Edgewood, in Regent Square, the bridge re-opening means a return to normalcy, from being able to resume quick trips into Squirrel Hill to having full access to the trails where she and her husband hike regularly in Frick Park.
Through the year, she’s also tried to see the positives, from the excellent communication by park rangers in Frick Park to their first-hand look at the rebuilding progress. “It was really exciting to see things like the large beams being delivered,” she said. “My husband and I went out to go see these trucks driving backwards down South Braddock delivering these gigantic materials.”
Other residents nearby have thrown themselves into advocacy, trying to improve the design of the new bridge, especially for bikers and pedestrians.
“It is impressive that they got it done as quickly as they did but we just want to maximize safety and access for all of the users,” said Marshall Hershberg, co-chair of the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition bicycle-pedestrian committee and a 50-year Squirrel Hill resident.
Mary Shaw, a Squirrel Hill resident and a principal of the Furnace 2 Furnace group, which advocates for improved bicycle infrastructure,
“It is a stellar engineering achievement but I think there was a missed opportunity,” she said. “It was reconstructed to support the transportation of the last century, not the transportation of the next century.”
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