Here are some of the latest news items from this morning, Wednesday, Oct. 18:

Mon Incline shut down

The Monongahela Incline is out of service until further notice to repair damage to a door on the west car, Pittsburgh Regional Transit spokesman Jim Ritchie said Wednesday morning.

The Pittsburgh Regional Transit will be operating a bus shuttle between the incline stations on West Carson Street and Grandview Avenue, he said, adding that PRT does not know how long the repairs will take.

In addition, rail service to Station Square on the city’s South Side is not available.

Because of repairs to a section of light-rail track in the nearby Mt. Washington Rail Tunnel, routes have been detouring over the Allentown line. Ritchie said the bus shuttles that were connecting riders to Station Square during the work, are not in operation Wednesday.

“We anticipate the rail work in the tunnel to be completed sometime later today,” he said.

*RAILS*

At this time we do not have a Rail Shuttle to Station Square.

OB riders needing to Station Square can board a 43, 48 or 51 bus to Station Square.

IB riders can exit South Hills Junction and board any bus heading inbound

— Pittsburgh Regional Transit Alerts (@PghTransitAlert) October 18, 2023

PennDOT seeking snowplow drivers

With winter weather approaching, PennDOT said Tuesday it is looking to hire more than 700 temporary equipment operators for the winter season to supplement the department’s full-time staff.

Details on minimum requirements, like possessing a commercial driver’s license and application information​, are available at the state’s website.

Metro Creative Any interest in driving a snowplow? PennDOT is looking to hire temp drivers.  

Also there, job seekers can apply for almost 100 other non-operator winter positions, such as diesel and construction equipment mechanics, welders and clerks.

PennDOT said it has over $197 million budgeted for this winter’s statewide operations, which includes deploying more than 4,700 on-the-road workers. It has more than 700,000 tons of salt on hand across the state and will take salt deliveries throughout the winter.

The public can access travel information on nearly 40,000 state-maintained roadway miles year-round at 511PA.com, and during the winter can find plow-truck locations and details of when state-maintained roadways were last plowed. The information is made possible by PennDOT’s Automated Vehicle Location technology, which uses units in the more than 2,600 department-owned and rented plow trucks to send a cellular signal showing a truck’s location.

Gas service being restored to Indiana County customers

Peoples Gas said Tuesday night it is working to safely restore the gas service to about 575 customers in Indiana.

In trying to determine the source of the outage, the gas company said it requires the company turning off the gas to all of these customers so it could then restore their service.

Customers without service and needing a warm place to stay for the night can contact Peoples Gas call center at 1-800-764-0111 for assistance.

Additional details were not available early Wednesday morning.

PUC probes Beaver County gas outage

Pipeline safety engineers from the state Public Utility Commission’s safety division are investigating the disruption of natural gas service to about 4,000 customers — residents and businesses — in Beaver County, authorities with the commission said Tuesday.

Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania said it has been restoring service to the customers who lost their gas service in the Baden, Conway, Economy Borough and Freedom areas because of what the company said was an incident that affected two natural gas distribution systems in Beaver County. The PUC’s safety division is monitoring Columbia Gas’ purging and restoration efforts by the crews.

The cause of the outage appears to involve a gas supply interruption from a third-party supplier, but the PUC said its investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident is seeking to determine whether there are any violations of state or federal pipeline safety regulations. The PUC has contacted its federal pipeline safety counterparts at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration regarding the outage.

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