President Joe Biden lands in Pittsburgh on Friday to discuss the supply chain and American manufacturing in Hazelwood. City public safety officials warn the president’s trip could cause some major traffic slowdowns in the city.
Biden’s motorcade will move from the Allegheny County Airport to Hazelwood Green.
Residents should prepare for rolling traffic delays and detours, limited parking, and other disruptions throughout the day.
Parking will be restricted along Second Avenue between Glenwood Bridge and Hazelwood Avenue while Biden speaks at Mill 19, a research and development hub in Hazelwood.
“It is advisable to pack a measure of patience and prepare ahead with an alternative route in mind to minimize travel hurdles,” Pittsburgh Police Commander Eric Holmes said in a statement.
Blair Street, Beehive Street, Lytle Street, Eliza Street, and Hazelwood Avenue will also have parking and travel restrictions from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Friday.
According to a White House official, Biden will tour the Mill 19 site, a holdover from the once-sprawling Jones & Laughlin steel works that now serves as a hub for development on robotics, artificial intelligence and automation.
During his speech at the site, the official said, Biden will tout an economic record that, by many metrics, is a resounding success despite inflation concerns, wrenching disruptions caused by the coronavirus, and Biden's own dismal approval ratings in polls. The economy grew by 5.7 percent last year, numbers out this week show, with a particularly strong 4th quarter. And Biden will highlight the estimated 367,000 manufacturing jobs added to the workforce over the past year — capped off by a recent decision by General Motors to build a new facility in Michigan and a recently announced new Intel plant in Ohio.
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki previewed Biden’s remarks, saying that he would “be talking about how far we’ve come in getting our economy moving again, making more right here in America, and ensuring all workers benefit. … He’s going to talk about our continued plans to out-innovate, out-build, and outcompete the world with the sort of competitiveness legislation that he has long championed.”
Biden will also discuss last fall’s bipartisan infrastructure spending plan, a sizable chunk of which is earmarked for spending on lock-and-dam reconstruction in the Pittsburgh region. The White House likens the present moment as an opportunity on the scale of the development of the interstate highway system in the 1950s, or the Apollo program of the 1960s, and it points to a number of executive orders and other steps that Biden has taken to encourage domestic manufacturing.
