Jun 17, 2002 3 min read

Allegheny County Executive Jim Roddey is suggesting that the Allegheny County portion of the Mon/Fayette Expressway be built first. It is a bad idea. It stinks as much now as it did 10 years ago when it was first proposed by other Allegheny County and legislative leaders.

Roddey says if the Allegheny section is built first it could generate enough toll revenue to float bonds which would pay for the entire project.

There are several reasons to reject the plan. At the top of the list is this one: If the Allegheny section is constructed first, the 12-mile link of the Mon/Fayette Expressway from Uniontown to Brownsville will sprout weeds from now until the end of time. It will never be built.

Once the Allegheny section is completed, concern about finishing the expressway project will end at the county line. Roddey is interested in getting the Allegheny project constructed. Once that happens, the pressure to build even another inch of the highway outside of Allegheny County will vanish.

Roddey may, in fact, have good intentions. The reality is quite different.

Fayette County residents have experienced numerous historical lessons which have taught them never to trust political promises, including the uncompleted section of the highway which deadends only a few hundred yards east of the Lane Bane Bridge. Weeds grow on that stretch of abandoned highway. Nothing else.

Anyone who says the Brownsville link will be completed only if the Allegheny section is built first is either na’ve, delusional or confused.

Another reason for not building the 24-mile Allegheny section first by using state or federal money that could go instead to construct the Brownsville link is this: The route of the highway winds through areas with hundreds of homes and businesses. Opponents will fight the development every inch, at every step of the way.

It will take years, many years, for the Allegheny section to progress to the construction stage. The Brownsville link could be ready for construction within two years. If Roddey’s plan were to be adopted, you can be guaranteed that no concrete would be poured for at least another decade. Most likely two decades.

A third reason to reject Roddey’s idea is that there are no guarantees that his prediction about toll revenue being sufficient to pay the $2.5 billion for all sections of the expressway is accurate. There are too many variables for anyone to make such a projection.

Roddey’s proposal has other problems. There’s no money right now to build any section of the expressway, in Allegheny County or anywhere else. The legislature still needs to come up with a financing plan. One proposal, called Plan H, would divert millions of dollars from federal highway revenue each year to the expressway project. It remains to be seen how much support this idea will receive in Harrisburg.

Can anyone say, with any confidence, that Fayette County would not be forgotten or ignored once the Allegheny County section is constructed? It wouldn’t matter if the toll revenue was triple the original estimates. There would be no money trickling down the expressway from the north to Fayette County. None. Zero.

Construction should begin on the expressway, in Allegheny and in Fayette, after a financing method has been approved. If opponents delay the Allegheny section, that’s no reason to delay the Brownsville work.

Putting Allegheny ahead of Fayette is a sure-fire way of delaying the project for decades. It would destroy, totally, all hope of ever getting more concrete poured in Fayette County.

Mike Ellis is the editor of the Herald-Standard. His e-mail address is: mellis@heraldstandard.com.