MFE under construction near Uniontown.
Photo PA Turnpike Comm.

The old saying “flogging a dead horse” comes to mind when talking about the extension of the Mon-Fayette Expressway (MFE) into Pittsburgh. While there is sufficient funding to complete the highway from Fairchance in Fayette County to the West Virginia border, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission acknowledges that there are no funds to extend the MFE from Rte 51 in Jefferson Hills north to Monroeville and along the Mon River through Duck Hollow into Hazelwood. A failed “Public-Private-Partnership” was the final effort to raise the $4.5 billion needed for the northern extension.

What was once seen as the salvation for the Mon Valley has long since become outdated. Now the ghost of the MFE hangs over communities like Braddock, Duquesne and Hazelwood, suffocating fresh ideas and delaying efforts to move on. It is time for leaders at the state, county, and local levels to officially banish the MFE ghost.

The day after the State of the Union speech, the Obama administration announced an $8 billion program “to develop America’s first nationwide program of high-speed intercity passenger rail service”. In a press release applauding the move, the Sierra Club stated:

“These high-speed rail projects will put tens of thousands of Americans to work on important projects across the country. High speed rail will provide a needed transportation choice for Americans that is fast and convenient and will reduce carbon emissions and air pollution and cut our dangerous dependence on oil.

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It is no secret that Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges are in a sad state, nor is it a secret that public transit needs more sustainable funding. The tolling of I-80 is designed to help alleviate these problems.
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With citizen input, over the past two years the Port Authority of Allegheny County has been developing a comprehensive Transit Development Plan (TDP). Included in the plan are Route Changes, Service Information, and Fare Changes. A Public Hearing on the TDP will be held:

8:00 am – 8:00 pm Tuesday, September 15
Pittsburgh Marriott City Center
112 Washington Place
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

A special bus shuttle will operate in Downtown during the hearing hours. Information about speaking at the hearing is available at the TDP website or by calling the  hotline at 1-866-583-0837.

Public comment is also possible at the TDP website, with a deadline of Wed, September 28.

As part of a national Car Free Fridays ampaign, on June 12 BikePGH launched a city-wide initiative to encourage commuters to leave their cars at home and use theiri bikes at least once a week.

As a sponsor of this effort, the Port Authority points out that bike racks are on nearly two-thirds of PAT buses, operating along 12 Authority routes. Bikes also are allowed on the T light rail system and Mon Incline – but not during rush hours.

For more information about bikes and buses, contact: Jim Ritchie at jritchie at portauthority dot org.

In the recently enacted stimulus bill $8 billion was allocated for investments in high-speed rail. This action has revived interest in a number of intercity High Speed Rail projects, including a line from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the PA Turnpike Commission (PTC) will close its Mon Fayette Expressway office in Duquesne. The closing is necessitated by declining customer visits and a “pause in project advancement due to funding limitations”. The quote from the PTC news release is a beautifully euphemistic way of saying that the $$$ ain’t there. One early hope of supporters was that funding for projects like the MFE might have been included in the infrastructure portion of the stimulus package, but that hope has not materialized.

Will the Mon Fayette Expressway ever be extended into Pittsburgh and Monroeville? For the past two decades opponents have viewed the MFE as an outdated approach to re-development, being a conduit for energy-consuming sprawl and destructive of communities. But what is stopping the extension of the MFE is not environmental arguments, but the hard reality of empty coffers.

Conceived in the 1950s as a trucking route for the steel industry, after the drastic decline of the industry in the 1970s and 1980s the proposed highway was seen as a re-development savior for the Mon Valley. In 1985 the state legislature charged the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) with selecting a transportation system that would bring industry back.

Not surprisingly, the PTC decided that what was needed was a limited access toll road, hence the MFE. Construction started in 1973. Today the MFE is almost complete from Rte 51 in Jefferson Hills down to the West Virginia border. Two northern “prongs” of the system are still in the planning stage; the 26 mile Southern Beltway project from Rte 22 near the airport to the existing MFE in Union Township, Washington County, and the 24-mile extension of the MFE from Rte 51 north to Pittsburgh and Monroeville.

The estimated cost to complete the Southern Beltway is $1.4 billion, and to extend the MFE north the cost is $3.8 billion. This is $5.2 billion that the TPC does not have. Nor does the state.

Until quite recently it seemed that the supporters of the MFE, including Gov. Ed Rendell and Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, might perhaps get at least a portion of their $5.2 billion included in the federal economic stimulus package. In a letter to this website, Dave McGuirk explains why this should not be, and in fact it seems that funding for the MFE is no longer on the state’s request list.

The second option is the “P3” approach, a Public Private Partnership. Last week the PTC announced that three parties are interested in possibly “financing, designing, constructing, operating and/or maintaining all or portions of the unfinished segments” of the MFE – Southern Beltway system.

Whether this approach will work is doubtful. Columnist Brian O’Neill recently quoted PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler as saying “I don’t know where $5 billion comes from”. Apparently Mr. Biehler doesn’t foresee enough volume on this road to provide the toll money to pay for itself.

So according to O’Neill, Biehler “is looking at light-rail projects and inter-city passenger rail, at giving people more travel choices, at making investments that will produce good sustainable benefits. He’d like to help the household that makes six car trips a day cut that to four.”

Let us hope that local politicians will finally put the northern extension of the MFE to rest, will improve the existing section of Rte 51 into the Pittsburgh, and will focus on transportation needs for 2020, not 1960.

Extending the under-used Mon Fayette Expressway (MFE) from Rte. 51 in Jefferson Hills through Braddock and into Oakland would cost about five billion dollars. The Turnpike Commission has tried every which way to raise the funds, even attempting to form a public-private partnership, but with no takers in sight.

In what looks like a last-gasp effort, the Federal stimulus package brought about by the financially created recession is seen by some local officials as a means of funding the MFE. In fact, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato is recommending that the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission include a $4 billion line item for the MFE in a list of regional priorities to be submitted by the Commission.

Whether the Obama administration will include construction of new roads in the stimulus package is an open question. Certainly environmentalists will urge the new administration to favor funding mass-transit projects over energy-consuming highways, to support updating our clean water infrastructure and to invest in green, renewable energy.

With its underfunded mass transit system, crumbling bridges, and an inefficient highway system, southwest Pennsylvania knows what Washington Post writer Layton means when he says that the next Transportation Secretary will have a tough road ahead.

Add to the roads and bridges an antiquated lock and dam system, together with an outdated air traffic control system, the next Transportation Secretary will certainly have their hands full. Among those mentioned to fill the slot is Gov. Ed Rendell.

After conducting an informal survey of driver usage on the open sections of the Mon-Fayette Expressway, Post-Gazette reporter Joe Grata concludes that it is “a mostly lonesome highway”.

Despite the declining number of drivers on the highway, a Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission spokesman suggested that the revenue does in fact cover $4.1 million operating costs. That neglects to include the financing costs for the PTC’s $1.2 billion venture to date.

Of course, supporters of the MFE claim that the highway will reach its potential usage when the connections to Pittsburgh and Monroeville are built. Those connections would probably cost another $4 billion to build, a sum that neither the TPC, the state, nor the federal government has. On September 17 in Harrisburg the PTC explored the possibility of forming a public-private partnership with all kinds of possible enticements.

Being without the means to raise the $5.2 billion itself, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is now exploring the possibility of forming a Public-Private Partnership (P3) “to finance, design, construct, operate and/or maintain three remaining sections of the Mon-Fayette Expressway and Southern Beltway toll highways”.

At an informational meeting on September 17 in Harrisburg, Turnpike Commission officials will sit down with toll-road-interested companies from around the world to see if anyone is interested in constructing the last 50 miles of the project. Possible enticements to buyers are that the new owner would be given the existing toll road with the right to collect tolls on the entire system, and not all of the proposed northern legs of the toll road need be constructed.

One question that quickly comes to mind is how is a private partner going to get their money back? Some hefty tolls for the residents of the Mon-Valley? And in times of high fuel costs, how many people are going to use this toll-road conceived almost thirty years ago?

As majority chairman of the PA House Transportation Committee, Rep. Joseph Markosek wants the public to have a more inclusive role in transportation issues affecting the state. That’s why he has developed a website as an informational clearinghouse about the potential lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and other transportation-related public-private partnerships.

Markosek said he will post information, both pro and con, he receives as chairman of the Transportation Committee on the issue of leasing the turnpike, private-public partnerships and other revenue-generating initiatives, such as tolling additional state highways.

“If we are to move forward in this process, we must do so with full disclosure. The most important question we must ask ourselves is, ‘What is the best deal for you–the taxpayer?’ I hope the public will be an active partner with me in pursuing an answer to this question.”

View the website at: www.pahouse.com/yourturnpike

Rep. Markosek is waiting to hear from you. Please don’t disappoint him! Let me hear all of your ideas about how to solve the transportation crisis.

–Marilyn Skolnick, Transportation Chair

Author: Andrea Boykowycz
With your support, Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh passed resolutions opposing the acquisition of right-of-way properties in the Mon-Fayette’s PA 51 to I-376 corridor. Pennsylvania Turnpike CEO Joseph Brimmeier announced in December that the Turnpike would hold off on buying any properties until new funding for the road has been advanced by the Legislature. This is a great victory!

There’s not much time for rejoicing, however: budget negotiations have begun in Harrisburg, and the Turnpike is competing for new tax dollars against PennDOT and every public transportation agency in the state. Meanwhile, Port Authority of Allegheny County has proposed cuts in service and hikes in fares to cover its budget shortfall next year; and PennDOT projects like the bridge repair for the Boulevard of the Allies in Oakland have stalled due to insufficient funding.
The choice for local representatives is clear: fund public transit and repair our crumbling roads and bridges, or funnel more money into the disastrous boondoggle called the Mon-Fayette Toll Road.
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD. Visit www.MFX-handsoff.org to take action and sign on to our mailing list for action updates. Or contact Andrea Boykowycz at PennFuture for more information and ways to get involved: tel. 412-258-6682 or email andrea@pennfuture.org.

Author: Peter Wray
Although it has no money for construction, the PA Turnpike Commission (PTC) plans to begin buying up properties in the Mon-Fayette Toll Road’s path between PA 51 and I-376 as soon as possible. Not only would this move cripple communities, but towns and schools would suffer the loss of property tax revenue–all for the sake of an unfunded project with no clear future.

The current budget shortfall for the Toll Road is $3.4 billion, and the Turnpike Commission currently has no viable source for those funds, as documented by the Urban Land Institute in a report earlier this year, and confirmed by PTC Director Joe Brimmeier.

We are calling on our local representatives to protect our communities by insisting the Turnpike hold off on right-of-way acquisition until they have secured all the funds needed to complete the project.

YOU CAN HELP by visiting www.MFX-handsoff.org and taking action. Or call Andrea Boykowycz at PennFuture for more information and ways to get involved: 412-258-6682.