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Link to Pittsburgh still a long way off

Saturday, April 13, 2002

By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Thirty-five miles down and about 35 miles and $2.5 billion to go.

	Maj. Steven Roemhildt of the Army Corps of Engineers glances at protesters yesterday during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new stretch of the Mon-Fayette Expressway. Roemhildt said he attended the ceremony to show support for the 13 Medal of Honor winners after whom the expressway interchanges are named. (John Beale, Post-Gazette) Map: Monfay -- Thirteen more miles

That message was made clear yesterday as Pennsylvania Turnpike, public and civic officials cut ribbons to open the last 13 miles of a 17-mile section of the Mon-Fayette Expressway between I-70 in Fallowfield and Route 51 in Jefferson Hills.

"If we stop here, the great promise of this road will be lost," Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey said. "We must complete the expressway all the way to Pittsburgh."

"Let the word go forth to any naysayers out there that we're going to build the sections between Uniontown and Brownsville, and to Pittsburgh and the airport," Turnpike Commissioner Jim Dodaro of White Oak said. "The expressway will become the catalyst for the Mon Valley and the region."

Hundreds of ceremony visitors and participants endured -- but mostly ignored -- an anti-expressway demonstration carried out by several dozen people.

Tom Buchele, director of the University of Pittsburgh-affiliated Environmental Law Clinic, which is providing legal assistance to highway opponents, said his necktie adorned with dinosaurs symbolized his feelings.

"New expressways are dinosaurs of economic and transportation planning," he said.

Several hours after multiple ceremonies naming the Washington County portion in honor of state Sen. Barry Stout, D-Bentleyville, and existing and future interchanges in honor of 13 Medal of Honor recipients, the four-lane toll road opened to traffic.

The toll is $1 for cars and pickup trucks, 50 cents at three intermediate interchanges, and up to $5 for some six-axle tractor-trailers.

	A lone motorist travels on a new 13-mile stretch of the Mon-Fayette Expressway yesterday afternoon shortly after the road opened to traffic. (Lake Fong, Post-Gazette)

The 17-mile section of expressway, the first piece to enter Allegheny County, cost $588 million.

Seven miles of already opened expressway connect to the new section, providing 24 continuous miles to California, Pa., and the Brownsville areas.

Eleven more miles have been completed in the Uniontown area.

What remain are the Uniontown-to-Brownsville section and the Route 51-to-Pittsburgh-and-Monroveville sections. The latter, where expressway opposition has spawned, is in the environmental study and alignment stages. It isn't likely to be built for at least six more years.

The first of three sections of the related Southern Beltway that connects with the Mon-Fayette Expressway is poised for construction. Called the "Findlay Connector," the road would go to Pittsburgh International Airport, but because turnpike officials have not committed to proceed for now, all except planning work has reached an end for now.

"The greatest honor would not be to name a part of the expressway for me but to finish the other projects," said Stout, who led legislative fights in 1991 and 1997 to win state funding that has raised nearly $1.5 billion for toll road expansion.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation started the expressway 40 years ago, completing 10 miles subsequently turned over to the turnpike.

The prime advocate has been the Mon Valley Progress Council of business, government and industrial development groups seeking not only a modern highway but transportation solutions to the loss of mining, manufacturing and other jobs.

KDKA radio talk show host Bob Logue, who served as Progress Council executive director from 1980 to 1986, when the ground work was laid for the turnpike to assume responsibility, said he wasn't surprised to see the project taking so long.

"You have to go through so many procedures any more," he said. "But, absolutely, one day the expressway will make it to Pittsburgh. Necessity will overcome all objections to the project."

Jefferson Hills Mayor Mary Larcinese said the expressway would put her community on the map, although it opposed the intrusion of the toll road in the early stages.

"Eight years ago, a gentleman screamed at me and said the only reason I wanted the road was so I could go shopping at the outlet stores in West Virginia," she said. "We don't have to go there. They can come to us."

West Virginia is building four miles, from the Pennsylvania line to I-68 east of Morgantown. When the Mon-Fayette Expressway is finally finished, it will provide an interstate-grade link between there and the Parkway East.