Pittsburgh's bridges need baths too. This is the work that goes into washing them.
Pittsburgh has a lot of bridges: 446 of them, at least by one often-cited count. When you factor in all of southwestern Pennsylvania, that's a whole lot of bridges that need to be maintained — and washed — by the local PennDOT office.
KDKA-TV's Drone Team flew over the West End Bridge when it was getting a bath — something that happens once a year.
"Our crews this year, to give you an idea of what we're up against, will be washing 1,147 bridges," said Lori Musto, PennDOT District 11's maintenance director.
They do one standard cleaning on all those bridges once a year, then one deep cleaning once every five years. The standard yearly cleaning is to get rid of things like salt added over the winter. The big deep clean is to get rid of corrosives like salt and other debris, primarily in any joints or bearings in the bridge.
"The salt is a very corrosive material. So we want to get that salt off the bridge, off the steel. That's why we do that outside fascia beam. That's more likely to be exposed to the salt. And then we worry about the bearings. That's what lets the bridge move as needed," Musto sad.
The PennDOT workers who do the cleaning are the same ones who do everything from patch or fix roadways to pick up litter. Some of the bigger jobs are contracted out. But the next time you see traffic stopped or moved to a single lane for bridge washing, you'll know that bridges need baths too. It helps keep them strong and live longer.
