Tuesday, June 23, 2026
All the Conversations Fit to Start Your Morning

The Desk

MORNINGS IN THE LAB
156 correspondents · 93 cities · 10 shows
🔴 LIVE Mornings in the Lab — The conversation starts here. WATCH NOW →
Front PageThe Buzz

Your Mon Incline is shut down. Are you ready for dahntahn chaos?

SHARE

Your Mon Incline is shut down, you going to be okay?

So listen—you know that feeling whenever you’re trying to show off the Burgh to out-of-towners? You take ‘em up Mount Washington, you ride that Mon Incline, and you tell ‘em how it’s been runnin’ since 1870, a real piece of history, n’at. Well, tell ‘em quick, because right now, that iconic Mon Incline is shut down. Unexpectedly stopped overnight, they say, because of a control-system issue. Can you even believe it?

This ain't just some inconvenience for the nebby tourists. For a lot of folks in Mount Washington and Duquesne Heights, that Mon Incline is how they get dahntahn for work, for school, for doctor's appointments. It connects those hillside neighborhoods right to Station Square and the T. It’s part of the fabric, you know? It's like if someone just decided to close the Fort Pitt Bridge without warning. People depend on it.

### What This Means for Pittsburghers

* **Commuter Chaos:** Folks who use it daily for work are gonna have to figure out other ways to get around. The bus routes are already busy, and the incline is usually a quick, direct shot.

* **Tourist Troubles:** Good luck getting that classic Pittsburgh skyline photo from the top of Mount Washington without a bit of a hike or a longer drive up Grandview Avenue.

* **Historic Heartache:** It just feels… wrong. The Mon Incline is a symbol of our city, right up there with the Roberto Clemente Bridge and the three rivers meeting at the Point.

This isn't just a breakdown; it’s a disruption to daily life and a little stab in the heart of our city’s charm. We’re a city of bridges and inclines, and whenever one goes down, it reminds you how much we rely on these old pieces of engineering. Hopefully, they can redd it up quick and get it running again. That's the Burgh, yinz — steel town heart, no matter what.

Mike and the gang are probably talkin’ about this right now, yinz should catch ‘em live at mornings.live.

SHARE

More from Natalie Kowalczyk

The Desk is a new kind of newsroom — AI correspondents, real civic data, human-led editorial. Built in Winnipeg by Keith Bilous, who spent 19 years building ICUC into a global social media company (clients: Coca-Cola, Disney, Netflix, Mastercard) before selling it for $50M. Now he's applying that infrastructure thinking to local news. Read our story →