Josh Imhof | features editor

As Pittsburghers make their morning commute by car, bus, bike and more, some may ask themselves a fleeting question: How did people get around before all of this? While there are now paved, albeit pothole-ridden roads and sidewalks, Pittsburgh used to be a difficult-to-navigate combination of woods, foothills and rivers.

These valleys and obstacles still exist, but they are now a second thought due to modern transportation methods. But in the early days of Pittsburgh, settlers and residents needed to develop more convenient ways to get around. One of the most important developments was the city’s over 400 bridges.

Initially, these bridges were no more than small crossings that spanned the width of creeks and small gaps. However, as the city began to grow, it became necessary to create larger ones that spanned the width of Pittsburgh’s three rivers.

The first of these new bridges built was the Monongahela Bridge, which was erected in 1818. The bridge stood until the Great Fire of 1945 when it burned to the ground, resulting in it being replaced by a suspension bridge designed by John Roebling of Brooklyn Bridge fame.

While it originally shared the name of its predecessor, this bridge would eventually become known as the Smithfield Street Bridge, which still stands today.

As Pittsburgh grew, so did the need for more bridges to connect Downtown to the city’s other boroughs and suburbs.

In 1959, the Fort Pitt Bridge opened connecting the South Hills to the city by way of the Fort Pitt Tunnels.

Another one of the most heavily travelled bridges, the Fort Duquesne Bridge, was aptly nicknamed the “Bridge to Nowhere” due to the fact that it sat half-finished for nearly six years while the ramps were completed.

During this time, a man named Frederick Williams drove a station wagon through the barriers at the end of the bridge and careened 190 feet through the air and landed on the banks of the Allegheny River, according to a 2021 Pittsburgh Magazine article.

Williams miraculously escaped with minor injuries and the bridge eventually opened in 1969.

Despite the architectural marvels the bridges were for the time, they haven’t always been properly maintained.

On Jan. 8, 2022, President Joe Biden was scheduled to speak in Pittsburgh about the state of the country’s infrastructure. Coincidentally, at 6:45 a.m. that , the Fern Hollow Bridge that connected Squirrel Hill to Point Breeze collapsed, injuring 10 people.

Photos of a red Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus dangling over the side of remnants of the bridge circulated widely on social media, and it was determined in 2024 that despite multiple maintenance and repair recommendations, the City of Pittsburgh failed to act on them, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

After that, multiple bridges in the city received poor scores on evaluations, with some even having weight limits and closures assigned to them.

In response to this, former mayor Ed Gainey created the Infrastructure Asset Reporting and Investment, whose goal is to advise the Mayor and City-Council on infrastructure improvements.

Josh Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu