Getting Around: Landscaping overlooked on Mon-Fayette Expressway

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Getting Around: Landscaping overlooked on Mon-Fayette Expressway

Sunday, May 13, 2001

Bland. Nondescript. Boring. Undistinguished. That's how parts of the Mon-Fayette Expressway completed thus far strike me, and I've traveled on every completed mile.

The highway itself is impressive enough from an engineering standpoint -- second highest bridge in the state; enormous amounts of rock and dirt excavated; valleys, streams and railroads spanned; enough concrete to build 100 stadiums in Pittsburgh.

The Mon-Fayette Expressway, a $2 billion project that is the most expensive public works project in state history, is following the Monongahela River corridor from Interstate 68 just south of the Pennsylvania-West Virginia line to Pittsburgh and the Parkway East.

The 70-mile project through some scenic spots of Fayette, Washington and Allegheny counties is to provide modern highway access in areas where little exists and spawn economic development in communities where little exists.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, the state-related agency entrusted with building the expressway, has opened about 20 miles, including four miles that opened Friday north of Interstate 70 in Fallowfield. Thirteen more miles north to Route 51 in Jefferson Hills will be opened about 10 months from now.

Kudos to the expressway supporters. Years of perseverance are finally paying off.

OK, Grata. Then what's your problem?

If the Mon-Fayette Expressway is about our future, if it's about making a statement, if it's about changing our coal-and-steel image, if it's about "greenfields" not "brownfields" and if it's about showcasing our natural assets, then planners and consultants have overlooked that final, special touch: landscaping.

Every slope, hillside cut, fill area, interchange island, median and shoulder has been mass-seeded with types of grass specified for highways. In a few cases, cut trees have been bulldozed into small piles to serve as wildlife habitat at the edge of rights of way.

That's about the extent of the landscaping, leaving the way clear for a profusion of ugly sumac trees derisively known as Pittsburgh palm trees.

The turnpike and its dozens of well-paid consultants and subconsultants failed to include stately, colorful trees, shrubs, bushes and wildflowers to dress up terrain scarred by behemoth bulldozers. As a result, the project looks like little more than a "cookie-cutter" design that can be taken for any ordinary highway.

Minds occupied with building ribbons of concrete created a nice, fast ride. That's all.

Look for yourself when you have an opportunity. Even a 2.3-mile section of Route 51 rebuilt through Jefferson Hills to accommodate a major expressway interchange, while improved, contains no plantings that could have made it something special.

Where are the small pockets or "scallops" excavated into hillsides where dogwoods, Scotch pines, hickory trees and junipers could break up monotonous appearances and help stabilize slopes?

Why are no rhododendrons or forsythia planted on the grass medians?

What? No English ivy to climb the base of the concrete piers?

Where are the perennials, wildflowers and indigenous plants?

How can Pittsburgh people believe promises to make the Mon-Fayette Expressway a good urban neighbor, and how can residents of Cecil and Peters accept the related Southern Beltway project when highway beautification has been ignored everywhere else?

Some states require that a certain percentage of highway construction costs be earmarked for landscaping, aesthetic amenities and special features such as scenic overlooks as a matter of policy or just good sense.

If Pennsylvania Turnpike officials want examples of highway landscaping that have created lasting impressions, they can look at:

The Merritt Parkway between Connecticut and New York, bumper-to-bumper traffic and white-knuckle driving, but gorgeous.

The well-landscaped Southern State Parkway and Meadowbrook Parkway, both on Long Island, designed by Robert Moses in the '30s.

Stretches of I-70 between Hagerstown and Frederick, Md., and most interstates in Kentucky, especially Interstate 75 north of Lexington.

Baltimore-Washington Parkway, with nice-looking stone walls that set off wide medians with lots of trees and the similarly eye-opening George Washington Parkway outside of Washington, D.C.

Lake Shore Drive in Chicago; Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, Fla.; Highway 66 through Tennessee; Route 280 south of San Francisco; the "Northway" (Interstate 87) between Albany, N.Y., and Montreal; and even Mexico -- the main highway between Cancun and the Mayan Riviera.

Practically any limited-access highway in Virginia, Maryland and Vermont, especially noted for extensive wildflower plantings.

There's no excuse not to make the Mon-Valley Expressway a good-looking highway, too.

Especially because we're paying the equivalent of about 1.5 cents a gallon in state gas taxes to build it.

Especially because we're paying about 10 cents a mile to drive on it.

Plate du jour. I recently spotted the personalized Pennsylvania license plate TOYRRS on a gray Oldsmobile traveling on Route 51 in the South Hills. I wondered whether the owner's name might be Lionel?

Contact Joe Grata c/o The Post-Gazette or you can e-mail him at jgrata@post-gazette.com. Not all transportation questions, suggestions and complaints can be addressed due to volume.