A public-private partnership is in the home stretch of reconstructing a White Oak bridge.

“So far so good on Ripple Road,” Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners spokesman Dan Galvin said last week after girders were set in place on the bridge spanning Long Run some 500 feet away from Long Run Road (Route 48).

“That is still planned for a mid-November completion,” Galvin said. Crews from Walsh Construction have been working toward that target date since late July.

The mid-November date is a couple of weeks later than an earlier-announced plan to finish a bridge that normally averages more than 9,100 vehicles a day by the end of October.

Still, it is faster than bridge replacement might have occurred without the Rapid Bridge Replacement Project that utilizes a partnership between PennDOT and Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners.

The Ripple Road bridge was built in 1939 and was one of eight spans scheduled for replacement this year in Allegheny County by the partnership.

Another is a bridge that carries Streets Run Road over the stream of the same name between Brentwood and Lutz Hollow roads in Baldwin.

The average volume of traffic there is 7,900 vehicles a day.

Plenary Walsh is overhauling three Streets Run Road bridges, with another to be closed between July and August and a third between July and September next year.

Detours for all three of those bridges carry traffic through parts of West Mifflin.

The detour for Ripple Road bridge involves Long Run Road (Route 48) in White Oak and McKeesport, Walnut Street (Route 148) in McKeesport and Versailles and Center Street (Route 2118) in Versailles and White Oak.

Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners agreed to finance, design, replace and maintain Rapid Bridge Replacement Project spans for 25 years.

Galvin said the public-private partnership approach allows the state transportation department to replace bridges more quickly while achieving significant savings and minimizing impact on motorists.

The Ripple Road bridge is one of several projects ongoing in White Oak and neighboring communities.

One-lane traffic is still found on stretches of Lincoln Way as Plum Contracting of Salem continues a PennDOT widening project between State Street and Route 48.

According to a Lincoln Way website maintained along with a project hotline by the Airport Corridor Transportation Association, completion is expected in the spring or summer of next year.

Another project nearing completion is on McKee Road in White Oak and North Versailles. That project is part of a group contract A. Folino Construction of Oakmont has for three Allegheny County roadways.

In September a two-month-long, $900,000 slope-stabilization project was completed on Allegheny County-maintained Coulterville Road in White Oak and South Versailles by Pugliano Construction of Plum.

Mike Dillon, the county's deputy public works director for engineering, said county crews milled the roadway from Lincoln Way to the Westmoreland County line a couple of weeks ago. He said crews will pave the roadway in the next week or two as part of a county-wide paving schedule.

Patrick Cloonan is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-664-9161, ext. 1967, or pcloonan@tribweb.com.

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