Mon Valley Alliance to honor lawmakers, Turnpike Commission
The Mon Valley Progress Council celebrated the success of its organization and the valley during 50 years of its annual dinners.
When the annual event is held May 12 at the Willow Room in Rostraver Township, it will celebrate the formation of the Mon Valley Alliance. That alliance will become official April 1.
The alliance — formed from the consolidation of the Mon Valley Progress Council and Middle Monongahela Industrial Development Association — was announced last week.
The event will honor state Reps. Peter J. Daley and R. Ted Harhai.
The Frank Irey Jr. Joined in Progress Award — presented periodically by the Progress Council — will be presented to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. Named for the longtime former president of the progress council, the award recognizes those who make significant commitments to the economic progress of the region.
Harhai, a Monessen Democrat, and Daley, a California Democrat, are retiring from the state Legislature at the end of the year.
The Turnpike Commission is being recognized for its efforts to complete the Mon/Fayette Expressway from state Route 51 in Jefferson Borough to Interstate 376 in Monroeville.
The Progress Council had been advocating a plan to expand the Martin Luther King Jr. Busway as a way to access Pittsburgh and industrial sites. The busway extends from downtown Pittsburgh to Swissvale. The plan would extend the busway 2.7 miles to a planned intersection with the Expressway in East Pittsburgh.
Joe Kirk, executive director of the Progress Council, said the Turnpike Commission is working to accommodate that busway extension into its construction plans.
“They have to update the (Environmental Impact Statement) and are engaging in that now,” Kirk said. “That is an 18-month process.”
The goal is to begin construction of that northernmost section of the expressway by 2020, Kirk said.
Such construction was revived by the passage of Act 89 of 2013, the state’s comprehensive transportation funding legislation. It includes $86 million a year by the fifth year to support bonding for construction of the Expressway and Southern Beltway.
“The Turnpike Commission made it very clear when the Expressway and Southern Beltway were assigned to them in 1985 that they would need additional revenue,” Kirk said. “There was no new revenue from 1992 to 2013.”
Kirk said Daley is being recognized for his “lifetime of work as a legislator.” Daley was instrumental in the formation of the Governor’s Action Team and Mon Valley Economic Revitalization, he said.
He said Harhai is being recognized for being a proponent for securing funding for municipal infrastructure.