PITTSBURGH — A light pole fell from the new Commercial Street Bridge onto the road below, landing about 20 feet in front of a couple’s car after the wife saw it falling and yelled for her husband to stop. The bridge carries Interstate 376, the Parkway East, over Commercial Street and is only a few months old.
“I happened to be looking up at the bridge and it looked like a large silver object was falling, and I said to my husband, ‘Oh my gosh, it looks like something is falling off the bridge,’” Erin Milanovich told WPXI. Then she screamed, “Oh my gosh, STOP!” and her husband slammed on the brakes.
No one was hurt, and the pole ended up on the side of the road, snapped in half. KDKA reported Oct. 19 that it happened over the weekend. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation says it was an accident.
How the Commercial Street Bridge light pole fell
A PennDOT spokesperson told WPXI that a bridge inspection was being completed when one of the subcontractors accidentally backed into the light pole with its equipment, causing the pole to fall onto Commercial Street. PennDOT’s account to KDKA differed slightly: it said the subcontractor hit the pole while crews were preparing for a consultant bridge inspection.
The spokesperson said the accident is no cause for concern about the new bridge’s structure. PennDOT is discussing what happened with the consultant and the subcontractor and guaranteed that any new protocols needed will be added to make sure it doesn’t happen again, the spokesperson told WPXI.
“It definitely could have had a disastrous ending for sure if it would have ended on top of our car,” Milanovich said. She also said she thinks it was a one-off. “I truly think this is an isolated fluke incident, and I don’t foresee it happening again,” she said.
Neighbors call it the second mishap
Vicki Yann, secretary of the Swisshelm Park neighborhood group Swisshelm Forward, told KDKA the group is concerned because this is the second mishap involving the bridge and its construction.
“I’m just glad that nobody got hurt,” Yann said. “Who’s paying attention to what and what is going to happen next? I really don’t want three to be a charm and there be a fatality,” she said.
Yann said she learned the cause from KDKA, because PennDOT hadn’t responded to her group by the time the station’s story aired. “I think that PennDOT really needs to kind of do some communication with the neighborhood to say what they’re doing to make sure that accidents like this don’t happen again,” she said. The couple was out of town and wasn’t available to talk to KDKA.
The first mishap came in July. At about 7:40 a.m. on July 17, roughly 24 hours after the old bridge was imploded, cleanup equipment struck a stick of dynamite that hadn’t gone off in the blast and set it off.
No one was hurt and no equipment was damaged. “For some reason, this one stick apparently was not detonated,” John Myler, PennDOT District 11 senior assistant construction manager, told KDKA at the time. PennDOT didn’t plan any further investigation with the contractor.
A new bridge over a busy street
The bridge is part of a $95 million replacement project on I-376 between the Edgewood/Swissvale exit and the Squirrel Hill Tunnel. Crews built the new 22-million-pound bridge alongside the old one and moved it into position using a lateral slide-in method. It was one of the largest lateral slide projects ever performed in Pennsylvania.
The parkway closed July 10 and reopened July 27 after a 17-day closure, a full week ahead of schedule. According to the governor’s office, an average of about 100,000 vehicles a day travel I-376 over Commercial Street. The overall project is expected to wrap up in summer 2027.
Anything that falls from a bridge, overpass or work zone onto a road below becomes a debris hazard for drivers. In this case, PennDOT says the cause was equipment contact during work on the bridge, and it has promised to add whatever protocols are needed.
Falling objects over traffic have had worse outcomes elsewhere. Earlier incidents include a woman killed by a tool that fell onto a Georgia highway and a United 767 that struck a light pole on approach to Newark, which scattered debris onto the New Jersey Turnpike.
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Sources
- WPXI — “Woman describes moment when light pole fell from Commercial Street Bridge, in front of her vehicle” (Oct. 19, 2026)
- CBS News Pittsburgh (KDKA) — “Pole falls off Pittsburgh’s new Commercial Street Bridge, nearly hitting car below” (Oct. 19, 2026)
- CBS News Pittsburgh (KDKA) — “‘Unknown and unexploded’ dynamite on Commercial Street Bridge detonates day after implosion, PennDOT says” (July 28, 2026)
- PennDOT — “I-376 Parkway East – Commercial Street Bridge Replacement” (project page, updated Oct. 19, 2026)
- Office of the Governor of Pennsylvania — “Governor Shapiro, Lt. Governor Davis, and Secretary Carroll Announce Reopening of Interstate 376 Commercial Street Bridge a Full Week Ahead of Schedule” (July 27, 2026)
