A vehicle slammed into the Gulf gas station known as Bob's Autotorium in Whitaker Borough early Wednesday morning, shutting down Route 837 near Kennywood Park as police, fire, and medical crews swarmed the scene. Dispatch reported the call came in just before 6 a.m., and it remained unknown whether anyone was injured as the response got underway.
News crews who arrived at the scene saw the vehicle lying on its side after slamming into the store building, and one person was transported from the crash site by ambulance, according to CBS News. Multiple first responder units converged on the intersection, which sits just south of the Rankin Bridge, a green-painted steel arch span that funnels traffic down into a tight T-intersection with Route 837.
For Bob's Autotorium owner Bob Ackerman, this is nothing new. Per his own count, his business has now been hit nine times over six years, a toll he attributed to drivers barreling off the bridge too fast to make the turn. As Ackerman put it in 2021, “The speed limit on the bridge is 25 mph; no one goes 25 mph.” He added at the time that drivers cannot travel 70 or 80 mph on the bridge and expect to turn at the end.
A Decade of Crashes at the Same Corner
The pattern goes back years. Surveillance video reviewed by CBS News in April 2021 captured a speeding vehicle crossing off the Rankin Bridge, flying three to four feet into the air, striking two parked cars and rolling over a third in the station's parking lot. Two years earlier, in April 2019, a speeding vehicle launched off the curb and landed directly on a newly installed gas pump, destroying it less than five months after it had been purchased, the outlet's earlier reporting found.
The damage stretches back even further. In 2015, the station was struck twice within four months, including an April crash that hit the building and destroyed a traffic signal, leaving the intersection without permanent signal lights for months, the station's report noted. The financial toll has followed the physical damage: Ackerman told the same outlet his gas station had been dropped by insurance providers twice because of the repeated collisions.
A Jurisdictional Standoff Over Fixes
Ackerman has pushed for rumble strips, speed-display feedback signs, and enhanced signage at the crash-prone corner. But then-State Representative Austin Davis noted that state officials could not intervene directly because the Rankin Bridge itself is owned and maintained by Allegheny County, not PennDOT, even though Route 837 below it is a state roadway. That split in ownership has repeatedly stalled requests for safety upgrades at the intersection.
Allegheny County Councilman Paul Zavarella's office acknowledged the hazard in 2021, saying that while County Council's administrative authority over Public Works is limited, he supported measures to slow motorists coming off the bridge. PennDOT District 11 had previously put money into the corridor, completing a $7.08 million preservation project along Route 837 from Duquesne to the Rankin Bridge in 2018 that included retaining wall and pavement work at the Whitaker intersection. A Pittsburgh Regional Transit corridor study published in December 2022 also flagged the Rankin Bridge intersection as a critical node needing coordinated safety improvements between PennDOT and the county.
Detour Traffic Adds to the Risk
Traffic volume at the intersection has spiked in recent months. Hoodline previously reported that PennDOT set up a major regional detour in March routing traffic onto Route 837 and across the Rankin Bridge during weeks-long closures of the nearby McKeesport-Duquesne Bridge, funneling more vehicles through the same crash-prone corner. Whether Wednesday's crash was tied to increased detour traffic has not been established.
As of Wednesday morning, Route 837 remained shut down in the wake of the crash, and it was still unclear whether the driver or anyone else was injured. Bob's Autotorium and the intersection at the foot of the Rankin Bridge have now weathered damage to their building, fuel pumps, and traffic signal across more than a decade, with no permanent fix yet resolving the jurisdictional gap between the county-owned bridge and the state-managed road below it.
