Pennsylvania Spent 50 Million on a Tunnel 150 Cars a Day Used, Then Couldn't Afford to Close It

There is a tunnel under Mount Washington in Pittsburgh with a gate at each end. In the mornings the gates lift and a single lane of cars runs through the hill toward the city, and later in the day it runs the other way. About fifteen hundred cars a day. On the 23rd of October, a transit board will vote on bringing those gates down for good on the 1st of December. It will not be the first time this tunnel has been shut. And when the gates come down, everything is going to stay exactly where it is. The lane, the lights, the tunnel, and two stone piers standing at the edges of the river in front of it, holding up nothing, the way they have since 1948. This is not a story about a tunnel that failed. It is a story about a tunnel that was dug as one half of a crossing, and has spent more than a hundred years waiting for the other half. IF YOU ARE GOING UP THERE As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. DeLorme Pennsylvania Atlas & Gazetteer: https://amzn.to/4iu51zY Ad. Pit Stop, the iPhone app that tells you what is at the next exits and warns you before a long stretch without gas: https://www.pit-stop-app.com/go/oldalignment WHERE IT IS The Wabash Tunnel runs under Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, from West Carson Street on the south bank of the Monongahela to Woodruff Street, beside Route 51. It is one reversible lane: inbound toward downtown in the morning, outbound later in the day. If the Pittsburgh Regional Transit board approves the closure on October 23, it closes for good on December 1, 2026. The Wabash park and ride stays open. The two piers of the Wabash Bridge stand at the edges of the river, one by Station Square and one by the Parkway on the downtown side. PRONUNCIATIONS Wabash: WAH-bash. Allegheny: AL-uh-gay-nee. Monongahela: muh-non-guh-HEE-luh. A NOTE ON THE IMAGES The research and the script are mine, from primary records and archives, and the sources are listed below. Where no photograph of a place survives, and for this channel that is often, the images are period material from elsewhere rather than the place itself. SOURCES WPXI, on Pittsburgh Regional Transit's plan to close the Wabash Tunnel for good, October 15, 2026 Hoodline and KDKA Radio, on the closure plan and the board vote, October 15, 2026 Pittsburgh Union Progress, Three different tales for Pittsburgh Regional Transit tunnels, October 20, 2025 Joe Grata, Wabash Tunnel, closed since 1946, to carry traffic starting tomorrow, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 26, 2004 Bill Steigerwald, Pittsburgh's Tunnel of LOV, New Geography, December 2010 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Bridge's piers a reminder of its disastrous fall Brookline Connection, The Wabash Tunnel, and Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, with Joe Bennett's 1977 account and newspaper reports of the 1903 accident The History of the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway Company, thepwvhiline.com Gribblenation, on the failed plans for the Wabash Tunnel and Skybus, November 2017 Wikipedia: Wabash Tunnel; Wabash Bridge (Pittsburgh); Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal; Transit Expressway Revenue Line IF YOU WERE THERE If you have driven through the Wabash, or you have family who worked for the Pittsburgh and West Virginia, I want to hear it. And if anybody has a timetable, a ticket or a photograph from the Wabash station downtown, I would very much like to know it still exists. Comment or write to [email protected]. Old Alignment. Abandoned American roads, railroads and infrastructure. New video every other day. #wabashtunnel #pittsburghhistory #abandonedrailroad