The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation reopened one northbound lane at noon yesterday on Route 65 (Ohio River Boulevard) in Kilbuck, where a massive landslide had closed the highway for nearly two weeks.

The two southbound lanes were reopened at 5:30 a.m. Saturday.

The openings made Pittsburgh weekday commutes easier for Ohio Valley motorists and eased traffic pressure on alternate routes, including Interstate 79, I-279, Camp Horne Road and Mount Nebo Road.

A second northbound lane will remain closed, but it had already been closed for much of the year to accommodate construction crews excavating the hill and building an access road to ASC Development Inc.'s shopping plaza on the site of the former Dixmont State Hospital.

While equipment continues to work round-the-clock shifts to remove the estimated 250,000 to 300,000 cubic yards of earth and stone that slid off the hillside, the fate of the shopping plaza remained uncertain. It was to be anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercenter, with a strip of small retail shops and an expansive parking lot.

"Traffic patterns were already set up for a single lane in the northbound direction," PennDOT spokesman Jim Struzzi said. "Keeping the lane closed provides a buffer" while cleanup and land stabilization activities take place next to the highway.

The hillside is being monitored as a precaution to ensure that land movement does not threaten Route 65 again.

Norfolk Southern Railway restored operations last week on the mainline east-west tracks just below the road. Seventy to 90 freight trains a day operate on the three sets of tracks that also were blocked for several days.

The minimum two-to-a-vehicle rule was placed back into effect on the I-279 high occupancy vehicle lanes after yesterday's inbound rush hour. The rule had been suspended to ease traffic after motorists were coming up Camp Horne Road and using I-279 to reach Pittsburgh.

Route 65 was closed to traffic late Sept. 19 after the slide occurred at the development site southeast of I-79. PennDOT said the developer continues to cooperate and pay all costs of the cleanup and damage. However, PennDOT has suspended its highway access permit, and the state Department of Environmental Protection has suspended its permit for now, pending resolution of the cleanup and the results of an investigation into the cause of the landslide.