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Are highway foes taking low road?

Friday, June 07, 2002

By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

As a voluminous environmental study of the northern end of the Mon-Fayette Expressway is being circulated for public scrutiny, Pennsylvania Turnpike officials say that much of the criticism being directed at the project is unfair and inaccurate.

	New expressway taking its tolls The newest 17-mile section of the Mon-Fayette Expressway, between Interstate 70 in Washington County and Route 51 in Jefferson Hills, met traffic projections in April. Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission officials said yesterday that 187,024 vehicles traveled the toll road during the 19 days it was open that month after an April 12 ribbon-cutting. That's an average of 9,843 trips a day, putting the expressway on pace for the total of 3.6 million that consultants estimated for all of 2003. A breakdown of trips based on the points where tolls were paid: Coyle-Curtin Road interchange, 46,161; Route 136 interchange, 9,198; Finleyville-Elrama Road interchange, 25,092; and the mainline toll barrier, 106,573. "We're very satisfied with the numbers so far," said Tom Fox, the turnpike commission's community involvement coordinator for toll road expansion. On a connecting seven-mile section of the expressway (Toll 43) past California and Brownsville, where the toll for two-axle vehicles was raised by a quarter to 75 cents at the mainline barrier, April transactions totaled 304,185 -- or more than 10,000 a day, notwithstanding a toll revenue study that projected a drop to 8,900 vehicles a day. A total of 35 miles of the Mon-Fayette Expressway are now completed, with 33 miles open to traffic in Washington, Fayette and southern Allegheny counties.

"There's a tremendous amount of misinformation on the streets," said Frank Kempf, turnpike engineer in charge of toll road expansion.

"Disagreements about opinions are fine, but disagreements about facts are not," he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board yesterday. "The frustration comes when anybody can get in the newspaper or on television or radio and say anything they want."

Kempf and other turnpike officials and consultants spent 90 minutes discussing the 24-mile, $2 billion end of the 65-mile toll road that would begin at Route 51 in Jefferson Hills and split into a Y north of Duquesne, with one leg linking with Business Route 22 and the Parkway East (Interstate 376) in Monroeville and the other following the north shore of the Monongahela River to the parkway, Second Avenue and Bates Street in Pittsburgh.

Turnpike officials and consultants have been analyzing, studying, planning and meeting about the northern section for 10 years. The draft environmental study -- the most significant milestone thus far -- has been distributed to municipal buildings and public libraries and is available on CD-ROM during a 75-day public comment and review period that runs through Aug. 14.

A series of four public meetings with engineers and three formal public hearings will be held this month and next. Turnpike officials hope to finish the environmental study process by mid-2003 and then ask federal agencies to issue a "record of decision," enabling the agency to buy rights of way, move to final design and, eventually, start construction.

By itself, the northern section, the main point of the project, is one of four active $1 billion-plus transportation "mega-projects" identified by the Federal Highway Administration.

Therefore, Kempf said, the turnpike officials and consultants have followed specific federal guidelines and methodology applied to all highway projects nationwide.

He said it was untrue that the northern end of the expressway will destroy riverfronts and opportunities to develop greenways, worsen traffic, divert money from other transportation projects and scar a wooded hillside between the Homestead High-Level and Glenwood bridges.

"They are flip comments and an injustice to the prescribed process" that has required turnpike officials to examine in detail the historic, recreation, pollution, noise, traffic, wildlife, construction and numerous other impacts the expressway poses, Kempf said.

Officials said the environmental documents -- 916 pages, plus 330 pages of appendices and 50 pages of drawings -- address virtually every issue raised by groups leading opposition to the project, including PennFuture, Citizens Against Toll Roads and Sustainable Pittsburgh.

"We've crossed all of the T's and dotted all of the I's since the process started," said Dave Zazworsky, special assistant to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission for toll road expansion.

Officials said criticism about the turnpike commission failing to evaluate alternatives, like a light rail line or upgrading existing highways, is unfounded. An "alternatives analysis," including public transit, was OK'd by the Federal Highway Administration several years ago.

"For people who say the money [for the expressway] would be better spent elsewhere, we can't" because of state laws governing user fees from toll roads, Kempf said.