Slides restrict traffic on Milltown Road in Penn Hills

A section of Milltown Road in Penn Hills has been restricted to a single, alternating lane because of two slides.

The affected part of the road is located between Newfield Drive, not far from Community Market, and Hulton Road, near JD Auto Body. Traffic is being controlled with temporary traffic signals.

A project to address the slides was tentatively scheduled to start on Dec. 2, PennDOT spokesman Steve Cowan said. Work is expected to take six to eight weeks to complete.

Traffic will be detoured. A detour plan was being developed, Cowan said.

The first slide is about 425 feet long and 40- to 50-feet deep, Cowan said.

“Along with remediation, shoulder and roadway reconstruction will be performed and two cross pipes will be replaced,” he said.

The second slide is about 100 feet away from the first. It is about 50 feet long and 10 feet deep, Cowan said.

“They will reconstruct the shoulder and half the roadway,” he said.

The affected portion of the road already was protected with gabion baskets, which are wire mesh boxes filled with stones that can be stacked on top of each other to form retaining walls. They have been in place along the road since at least 2007.

One of the repairs is located where the baskets are failing, Cowan said.

The road frequently is used by motorists traveling to the Oakmont and Harmar areas, and points beyond. An average of nearly 5,300 vehicles travel the road daily, according to PennDOT.

The affected area of Milltown Road is less than a mile from an area of Hulton Road that also had been restricted to one lane because of a landslide in February 2018. The road was closed between Iowa Street and Arbor Lane from July 2019 to January 2020 for repair work.