The Mon-Fayette Expressway has been a widely discussed transportation concept since at least the 1960s. Had it been built and operational way-back-when, it would have supported a thriving valley rather than attempt to revive it.
Now the towns near the proposed expressway's route are pockmarked by industrial brownfields, and the Main Streets of Uniontown, Charleroi, Monongahela, Clairton, McKeesport, Duquesne and Braddock seem to head one way -- out.
While no new highway can by itself reverse such economic damage, the expressway envisioned between West Virginia and Downtown, among its other benefits to Pittsburgh and outlying communities, will pose business and development opportunities that would not otherwise exist.
It's time to get on with this road.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is building the 100-mile Mon-Fayette Expressway and Southern Beltway system as a toll road, recently released the draft environmental impact statement on the most critical and contentious leg of the project, the 24-mile, Y-shaped, $2 billion section between Route 51 at Jefferson Hills in the south and the forks to Pittsburgh and Monroeville in the north. This is a milestone in the development of the overall highway package, which is one of four mega-projects in the United States.
Although more than 500 meetings already have been held in the last 10 years, producing countless hours of citizen and expert feedback, the draft environmental impact statement will now be the subject of four more informational sessions and three public hearings through the end of July. They will give concerned people and interested organizations, both pro and con, the chance to react further to the city's approaching highway link.
Some groups, like Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future and Sustainable Pittsburgh, announced their opposition or at least skepticism to the highway before the five-volume, 1,300-page draft statement was even released. But that's understandable because they have a sincere aversion to highways -- and if Interstate 279 to the North Hills were on the drawing board today, they probably would not embrace it either. It is the same with many citizens, especially many residents of the city of Pittsburgh.
But taken as a whole, the 65-mile Mon-Fayette Expressway, half of which is already in use, will bring certain benefits to the region.
It will provide a modern highway to move goods and people through communities that lack highway access. It will expand economic opportunity by cultivating brownfields targeted in local strategic plans. It will decongest Pittsburgh streets by providing a much-needed bypass around the Squirrel Hill Tunnel. And, in a region where many motorists shun the city because of perceived traffic problems, it will create a new thoroughfare into Pittsburgh that will deliver more workers, shoppers, students and visitors.
This highway is a two-way street, however, and some city residents fear that it will send more people out than it will bring in. That is a concern that any American city and its leaders must confront in the 21st century -- and the threat of suburban exodus should influence a city's decisions on everything from budget-and-tax policy to Downtown development, from the operation of schools to the livability of neighborhoods.
But the discussion should be informed and the threats substantiated. Pittsburgh will not necessarily lose people and businesses because of a highway; an argument could just as well be made that it will gain them. Also, Allegheny County is the core city, the Pittsburgh of the 21st century, and it will grow and prosper, at least in part, on the basis of its ability to address the key issues of infrastructure and capital investment that are embodied in this road project.
All that said, we expect the Turnpike Commission and its engineers to take great care in mitigating the impact of the expressway on specific city communities. It has made such efforts in Hazelwood, where the highway would run below ground, with street crossings built to maintain the neighborhood grid and three block-long covers built over the roadway for use as parks or other open space.
The engineers also have shown a willingness to satisfy the city on the connection to Oakland, where the project would provide additional lanes to smooth traffic flow at the Boulevard of the Allies and Bates Street, one of the chief logjams in the city's dense medical-university section.
In a similar vein, the turnpike also should explore the options for Braddock, where the expressway, by the draft environmental impact statement's own reckoning, will threaten neighborhood cohesion. It should also seek the best aesthetics for the stretch along the riverfront beneath the city's Duck Hollow and Summerset neighborhoods.
If these comments and those raised at the hearings can be adequately addressed in the final environmental impact statement by next summer, the turnpike could get a green light from Washington to begin property acquisition. Sections of the new highway could begin opening five years later.
On that long-awaited day, Pittsburgh's new expressway will have moved, finally, from concept to reality, with all the anticipated benefits.
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