Buckling road closes lane on Route 88 through Charleroi
Issue not related to collapsed trench that trapped worker
A section of Route 88 through Charleroi that was closed for months after a trench collapsed over the summer has been restricted to one lane since Friday after the roadway began to buckle, although borough officials said the two incidents are not related.
The issue near Eighth Street was first detected Friday after the surface of the road began to crack, prompting borough public works crews and state Department of Transportation workers to inspect the problem.
Borough Manager Joe Manning said Wednesday that the buckling appears to have happened following work by a contractor for a utility company that was installing gas pipelines in the area.
“It’s relatively new. It wasn’t part of the trench thing,” Manning said. “They were doing one of the crossovers with the gas company. It’s not a major thing, it’s not a big thing.”
He said the borough was working with the contractor and PennDOT to address the issues, but the company has already back-filled the areas that buckled and made other repairs to the street. The borough and PennDOT closed one northbound lane on Route 88 through Charleroi between Eighth and Ninth streets until the area could be inspected.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we wanted to block it down to one lane until they could do what they could do,” Manning said. “It’s reopened, but (they’re) meeting with PennDOT to make sure everything is up to their standards.”
PennDOT District spokeswoman Melissa Maczko said the department’s engineers went to the site Wednesday morning to review the temporary repairs and expected to reopen the lane later in the day.
“We’re still coordinating the cause, the timeline and the solution between the borough and the utility company,” Maczko said. “We’re working with both.”
That section of Route 88, which is also known as McKean Avenue, was closed for nearly four months following the Aug. 28 collapse of a trench that led to the rescue of worker Vincenzo Lopez, who was buried up to his chest in dirt for five hours. The two-lane road between Eighth and Ninth streets reopened to northbound traffic in mid-December.