Fears of nightmarish traffic jams after the Fort Pitt Bridge and Tunnel closes Saturday has led local businesses and their employees to dream of working from home. For some, the dream will become real next week. Some businesses already allow flexible scheduling, but more workers are considering it and other options in preparation for Monday’s evening rush-hour without the Fort Pitt Bridge and Tunnel. The outbound bridge and tunnel close at midnight and won’t reopen until Sept. 1. The $84 million project will detour roughly 75,000 motorists a day across the Liberty and West End bridges and continue next year with the work switching to the inbound lanes. F.W. Dodge, a division of the McGraw-Hill companies, which employs 22 people at its Washington’s Landing office, will offer both flextime and telecommuting options to employees. “It’s no problem at all,” said Dan Palmer, the company’s northeast regional manager who also plans to work from home some days. “We lived through the Port Authority strike. We remember clearly that we had to do the same things, hooking up with rides or finding a car pool.” See This Related Graphic Official Detours (1,019K) Map illustrating the official Fort Pitt tunnel detours You will need the Adobe Acrobat reader to view this file. Download the free reader here . At the Cohen & Grigsby law firm, Downtown, employees already take advantage of flexible scheduling, but the impending shutdown is leading even more to consider it, said Allyson Hurley, a spokeswoman for the law firm. “We have remote access and people are having that loaded on their home computers.” Nationwide, nearly 20 million people, or roughly 15 percent of the national workforce, work from home at least once a week in some shape or form, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. The widespread fear that closing half of what arguably may be Pittsburgh’s most crucial artery will cause commuting chaos may prompt more companies to extend the opportunity to work from home or use flextime scheduling. “If companies don’t offer flextime to employees, I would strongly urge them to do so,” said Brenda Dare, manager of cg2, a Pittsburgh human resources consulting firm. “You might see people taking advantage of being able to do that. Flextime, frankly, can ease some of that stress, like sitting in traffic.” There are employees like Bruce Rae of Castle Shannon who work structured schedules that prevent them from working from home or shifting the start and end times of their work days. “I work swing shifts, so I’m kind of stuck,” he said. Rae avoids the Fort Pitt Tunnel by taking light rail to and from work, but anticipates that ride may become more crowded next week. “I’ll find out next week,” he joked. Geoff Heineman also anticipates the shutdown will affect him by drawing more commuters into his Allegheny West neighborhood. And, similar to Rae, his Downtown office is not capable of allowing employees to work from home. “We’re not set up for it, but it’d be nice,” he said. “I live near the West End Bridge and I dread this. It’s bad enough anyway.” Tomorrow’s closing will simply be a preview, however, of the afternoon commutes next week — the first time Downtown office employees will face the full labyrinth of detours on their way home. Tuesday may be the first true gauge of the afternoon commute because the Pirates’ home opener at PNC Park is scheduled for Monday afternoon, which will draw extra traffic into the city . The simultaneous closing of Fort Pitt Boulevard outbound also makes Downtown travel a little trickier on the Monongahela River side of town. On the Allegheny River side, the ongoing construction of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center has the 10th Street Bypass blocked, and starting in mid-May the 16th Street Bridge also will close for improvement work.

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