Home >  Local News

Group unveiling toll road alternative

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

An anti-sprawl and environmental advocacy organization has prepared an alternative to the proposed 24-mile northern end of the Mon-Fayette Expressway leading to Pittsburgh and Monroeville.

In its plan, PennFuture, which is also representing other groups opposed to the toll road, calls for rebuilding existing roads into a 62-mile network of urban boulevards, improving connections to interstate highways, expanding trails and making transit investments to include light-rail extensions to Oakland, Homestead, Monroeville and West Mifflin.

Details of the plan are to be disclosed at a news conference today.

Residents will have an opportunity to ask questions and examine the proposal, called "The Citizens' Alternative Transportation Plan," at an open house from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Sept. 5 at Allderdice High School, Squirrel Hill.

PennFuture estimated its plan would cost $2.7 billion, or about $700 million more than the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's expressway proposal. But the group claims a multimodal network would provide more transportation choices, use funds more effectively, increase capital investment and cover more territory, thereby enhancing economic development as well as travel.

PennFuture would tap some of the same funding sources -- specially designated state gasoline taxes and motor vehicle fees -- that the turnpike commission has identified to finance revenue bonds for the northern section. The section would begin at Route 51 in Jefferson Hills and split into a Y-configuration in North Braddock. One branch would go toward Monroeville; the other would follow the north shore of the Monongahela River into Pittsburgh.

"We don't want the [expressway]," said Ray Reeves, a former Allegheny County planning director who is now a private consultant assisting PennFuture. "We think it will be a disaster."

Joan Miles, outreach coordinator for PennFuture, said the organization called on local and national experts to put together its alternative plan. It consulted the Port Authority and community groups, looked at other studies on such routes as 51 and 837, did a bus tour of the area and held roundtable discussions.

"We came up with a basket of solutions, not an individual solution," said Rob Pfaffmann of the Pittsburgh architectural firm Pfaffmann + Associates. "It deals with using land more effectively. The Mon-Fayette Expressway touches the tops of hills to take the path of least resistance."

Through the Turtle Creek Valley, where much of the expressway would be elevated, PennFuture proposes creating a four-lane boulevard between Monroeville and Duquesne, including a new bridge to cross the Mon River.

"Instead of a highway that flies over the top of heads," Pfaffmann said, a boulevard would provide better access and mobility and connect with multimodal transit centers, also served by light rail, in North Braddock and Monroeville.

PennFuture representatives also said their plan would provide connections to more Mon Valley "brownfields" -- mostly abandoned steel mills and other old manufacturing sites -- than the Mon-Fayette Expressway, which would bypass many of the sites, and promote "greenfields" development.

"There's nothing in the [expressway] plan to build connector roads," Miles said. That includes improvements to largely two-lane, winding and slow-going Route 837 between Elizabeth and the city's South Side.

PennFuture is presenting its plan late in the game. Thirty-five miles, or about half, of the Mon-Fayette Expressway is already built and open in parts of Fayette, Washington and southern Allegheny counties. The public review and comment period for the environmental impact study for the 24-mile northern section that PennFuture opposes will end Sept. 9.

The turnpike commission hopes to receive a record of decision from federal agencies that have been overseeing the project by late next year, meaning it could proceed with final design, property acquisition and utility relocation.

In April, PennFuture released a study on the Mon-Fayette Expressway and related Southern Beltway titled "A Truly Dismal Use of Public Funds," which said public funds would be more wisely invested in upgrading existing streets and highways, expanding transit and modernizing traffic lights "so old they belong in a museum."

Starting today, "The Citizens' Alternative Transportation Plan" is to be available on the Internet at www.pennfuture.org.