Shortly after the Squirrel Hill Tunnels opened in 1953, leaders at the state’s highway department proudly proclaimed they’d discovered a solution to one anticipated problem — keeping the gleam on the tunnel’s sparkling white tiles. Officials showed off two custom-built trucks that sprayed the tunnel walls with soap and water.
“Hooey,” said the folks in charge of cleaning the Liberty Tubes. The Tubes had been in operation for a quarter of a century. The crew there knew something about filthy tiles. Most problematic were tobacco chewing drivers who befouled the Tubes with streams of brown spit.
“You just try to get that off these tile walls without using a brush,” said one Tube attendant. “Tobacco juice won’t come off it you don’t rub.”
In the life of the Squirrel Hill Tunnels, it was an optimistic time, when a battle against grime was worthy of a press conference. Soon, a more vexing problem would arise. And if you’ve lived in Pittsburgh for more than a day, you know exactly what we’re talking about.
Originally, the posted speed limit on the Penn-Lincoln Parkway (now known as the Parkway East) was 50 mph. In the tunnel the limit was reduced to 35 mph.
The result? Traffic snarled at the tunnel entrances. So authorities raised the tunnel speed limit to 50 mph.
The jams persisted.
State police were urged to stand at tunnel entrances to try to “whip motorists through the tunnels with gestures, scowls, shouts or whatever it takes” to keep traffic moving at a proper speed. Signs were posted inside the tunnels, urging drivers to maintain a 55 mph pace.
Still, drivers slowed to 35 or even 25 mph.
Part of the problem, officials said, was the structure’s design. The tunnels were barely six years old in 1959, yet they were inadequate for the amount of traffic carried by the Parkway.
So the state highway department decided to convert one of the tunnel’s outbound lanes to an inbound lane during the morning rush hour. Highway workers on the east side of the tunnel set out traffic cones that allowed drivers to cross over the median and enter a “fast” inbound lane. “Desperation Plan in Desperation Situation,” blared one newspaper headline.
Allowing two-way traffic inside the narrow tunnel was “suicidal,” warned a county police officer named David Wallace. “It’s virtually an invitation for sideswiping and head-on collisions.”
The plan didn’t last.
Overcapacity wasn’t the only issue. In 1960 an engineer named Robert Klucher summed up a study on the jams: Motorists entering the tunnels slowed down and didn’t pick up speed until their incarceration ended and they once again saw daylight. Thus enlightened, the Pittsburgh Press blared, “Slow Pokes Cause Jams in Tunnels.”
“Tunnel driving tends to cause a recognizable psychological restraint on many drivers,” said Klucher, a master of understatement.
Declared one motorist, “It’s just one of those quirks of human nature that we can’t do anything about.”
Or maybe drivers are just slowing down to admire those sparkling white tiles. If so, a little tobacco juice would solve the problem.