Penn DOT secretary visits Uniontown on farewell tour
Bradley L. Mallory gets ready to leave office as Pennsylvania’s secretary of transportation after what he said were the best eight years of his career. “And, I believe the best eight years in Pennsylvania transportation,” Mallory said, stopping Tuesday afternoon at the state Department of Transportation District 12 office in Uniontown.
He said Pennsylvania’s roads are smoother or as smooth as the national average for the first time in history.
Mallory is on his farewell tour of the state, thanking all PennDOT employees for their work during his term and announcing plans to leave his post Jan. 20 on the departure of Gov. Mark Schweiker.
Named by then-Gov. Tom Ridge to the position Jan. 13, 1995, Mallory said he felt he accomplished more than expected partly because the state had more money than expected in that time for transportation. However, he admitted there is never enough money.
He commended District 12 for delivering every project he has asked of them, despite the increasing difficulty and expense of such projects.
He gave no specific plans for his future, but he said he looks forward to returning to the private sector.
Mallory displayed maps of PennDOT’s 12-year plan, and he and his colleagues talked about projects of local interest, although they made no major announcements.
He said much work goes into preparing the 12-year plan, which is updated biannually, and the process is set to get under way again this summer.
He said the process starts with calculation of how much state and federal money is available and then PennDOT meets with “planning partners” across the state to reach a consensus on how “to cut that pie.”
“There are people out there who say, ‘Gee, I wish the pie was bigger.’ And, so do I, but it isn’t,” he said.
He said the projects that eventually get on the list represent priorities for the state, and the process is a national model because no one bureaucracy is involved in making the decisions.
Mike Dufalla, district engineer, and Tom Brado, assistant district engineer for design, urged the public to attend the planning meetings for the 12-year plan, which will get under way this summer with involvement of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.
Mallory said the plan is always changing, and some projects get moved up on the list, while others lose their status as priorities change through the biannual planning process and ongoing, regular meetings.
Among the projects they discussed, possibly the most significant local roadway was the Mon/Fayette Expressway. The expressway is a Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission project, but Brado said PennDOT is working with the commission on the Brownsville-to-Uniontown gap in the road from Pittsburgh to West Virginia.
Highway officials are moving toward acquiring rights of way, which Brado said could take place in the next year. Construction, he added, depends on funding, which is not yet all in place.
Of interest in Greene County are improvements designed to alleviate traffic congestion on the Route 21 Morrisville corridor near Waynesburg, a project that Dufalla said is moving slowly. He said PennDOT officials are being cautious because of organized opposition to the project some 10 years ago. Brado said preliminary engineering should be completed through the end of this year, 2003 and 2004, final designs will be done in 2005 and contracts should be awarded in 2006.
The officials said plans continue for improvements to the length of Route 21, where some work has been completed. They said PennDOT is treating a new Masontown bridge as a separate project, while Route 21 has been divided into four sections, from the area of Brodak’s Shop ‘n Save in Masontown to Route 40 in Uniontown. Included in that work is focus on alleviating the congestion in the Cherry Tree Plaza area.
Regarding the Matthew Drive/New Salem Road area, Dufalla said New Salem Road to Route 21 has been placed on the federal aid plan, and efforts are under way to get the county business park-related area on the federal aid plan. The area has been of interest to South Union Township and Fayette County officials because of a proposed large retail development in the area and the burgeoning business park.
PennDOT handouts quoted 364 construction contracts totaling about $658 million occurring in the past eight years in District 12, which includes Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties. The lists of projects cited an emphasis on bridge restoration, and the Lane-Bane Bridge over the Monongahela River in Brownsville was the largest such project, at $24.3 million.
Among the projects in the $1 million-plus category, Fayette County had 26 listed, with the $18.4 million Mon/Fayette Expressway corridor from Morgantown, W.Va., toward Uniontown as the largest of the projects. The costliest of the 30 projects in Greene County was the $3 million bridge replacement over Dunkard Creek on Route 88 (Dilliner Road) in Dunkard Township.
Washington County had 62 and Westmoreland County had 64 of the $1 million-plus projects. In Washington, the most significant was the $28 million restoration of Interstate 79 from Marianna to Route 40 in Amwell Township and South Strabane. The largest Westmoreland project was the $12.1 million highway restoration of Route 119 and the Route 31 overpass to Technology Drive.