The Wabash Tunnel is a former railway tunnel and presently an automobile tunnel through Mt. Washington in the city of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Constructed early in the 20th century by railroad magnate George J. Gould for the

Wabash Railroad The Wabash Railroad was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. It served a large area, including track in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri and the province of Ontario. Its primary co ...

, it was closed to trains and cars between 1946 and 2004.

Operation as a railroad tunnel

Conceived in the late 1800s, the tunnel was built in 1903 for Gould's

Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad ...

venture into Pittsburgh, which failed in 1908. It carried passenger trains into the city until 1931, and freight trains until 1946. After the end of train service, the tunnel sat empty for many years. The tunnel was once connected to the Wabash Bridge across the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , )—often referred to locally as the Mon ()—is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-c ...

, but this was demolished in 1948, and was not replaced. Its two stone support piers remain in the river.

Conversion to a transitway

In the early 1970s

Pittsburgh Regional Transit Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT, formerly Port Authority of Allegheny County) is the second-largest public transit agency in Pennsylvania and the 20th-largest in the United States. The state-funded agency is based in Pittsburgh and is overseen ...

, then known as Port Authority, or PAT, spent today) rebuilding the tunnel for the never-to-be-operational Skybus

people mover A people mover or automated people mover (APM) is a type of small scale automated guideway transit system. The term is generally used only to describe systems serving relatively small areas such as airports, downtown districts or theme parks. ...

system. (This project was to include a new Monongahela River bridge.)

Use as a bus garage

During this period, the tunnel was used to hold up to 87 of PAT's disused 1950s-era transit buses in reserve. The tunnel portals were reinforced to deter vandals, to the satisfaction of PAT's insurers. Despite this, in 1980, vandals gained access and smashed hundreds of windows and headlights on the two rows of buses parked inside.

Conversion to a roadway

By 1992, the

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Yassmin Gramian. Presently, Pe ...

(PennDOT) was considering using the Wabash Tunnel as a roadway to compensate for an upcoming closure of the Fort Pitt Tunnel. As part of the conversion to a roadway, the guideways for the Skybus system were removed and replaced with new paving and drainage. When awarded in 1994, the contract for this work was worth today). However, in 1995, PAT declined to build a new road bridge (estimated at or today) to connect the tunnel with downtown Pittsburgh. On July 23, 2003 PAT approved contracts for today) to build

high-occupancy vehicle A high-occupancy vehicle lane (also known as an HOV lane, carpool lane, diamond lane, 2+ lane, and transit lane or T2 or T3 lanes) is a restricted traffic lane reserved for the exclusive use of vehicles with a driver and one or more passengers, i ...

(HOV) ramps and modernized the tunnel, as well as provide a 172-space park-and-ride lot along Woodruff Street. The little-used HOV lane was opened on December 27, 2004, running from West Carson Street on the South Side and through the tunnel to Woodruff Street in Mt. Washington. The Fort Pitt Tunnel to the west and the Squirrel Hill Tunnels to the east carry nearly all of the vehicular traffic heading downtown. On November 6, 2013 the Federal Transit Administration lifted the car pool requirements to provide an alternate route for drivers, due to the two-year closure of outbound West Carson Street. On February 24, 2017 PAT announced that the HOV restrictions had been waived permanently.

Operators

Originally built for the Wabash Railroad, the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railroad acquired it along with most of the ex-Wabash-Railroad property in 1917. The tunnel was sold in 1931 to

Allegheny County Allegheny County () is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,250,578, making it the state's second-most populous county, following Philadelphia C ...

for today). The county intended to convert it to a road and use it to relieve the traffic congestion in the Liberty Tunnels, and in 1933 commissioned a $5000 study to investigate this concept. , the tunnel was operated and maintained for PAT by Bruce & Merrilees, at an annual cost of $780,000.

Incidents

The tunnel's north portal was severely damaged in a 1925 landslide. The tunnel was temporarily closed due to fallen trees on July 19, 2012.

References

External links

PortAuthority – Overview of the Wabash Tunnel
* – Southern portal * – Northern portal

at www.brooklineconnection.com
Airport Busway/Wabash HOV Environmental Impact Statement
(includes plans for reopening the tunnel for automobile use) {{Port Authority of Allegheny County Road tunnels in Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels in Pennsylvania Tunnels completed in 1903 Port Authority of Allegheny County