Apr 11, 2003 By Steve Ferris 3 min read

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has started purchasing the properties it will need to build the Uniontown-to-Brownsville link of the Mon/Fayette Expressway, a Fayette County Transportation Alliance official said Thursday. Fayette County transportation consultant William Piper said right-of-way acquisition is under way, noting that he attended an “upbeat, positive” meeting of the expressway executive committee Wednesday in Washington County.

Jim Marzullo of the Fayette Expressway Completion Organization, who also attended the executive meeting, said the latest information from the turnpike commission is that the final design and right-of-way acquisition should be completed in August 2005. He said the original projections, which are now several years old, estimated that those two phases of the project would be finished in March 2005.

Marzullo cautioned that those dates were only projections, and the “slippage” between them wasn’t a cause for alarm, but he advised alliance members to monitor the progress of the highway planning.

Piper said money to build the Uniontown-to-Brownsville section will be available by the time construction is set to begin.

He said West Virginia officials are calculating the cost of purchasing the rights of way it will need to build a connection to the expressway from Interstate 68.

Turning to another subject, Robbie Matesic of the transportation consulting firm Benatec Associates, said the State Correctional Institution at Fayette plans to ask the Fayette County commissioners to make operational changes to the Fredericktown Ferry so it can better serve prison employees.

She said prison officials are preparing a letter that will explain the prison’s needs and ask the commissioners to address them.

Matesic summarized information that SCI-Fayette Deputy Superintendent Mark Krysevig provided at last month’s alliance meeting.

The prison will house up to 2,300 inmates and employ 700 Department of Corrections staff and 100 contract staff. It will open at half capacity in September and full capacity in December. Each inmate is allowed five visits per month.

The ferry has to run on a more consistent schedule so employees can arrive on time for their shifts, prison officials have said.

Matesic said no federal funds are available for ferryboats this year.

However, Chuck DiPietro of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC) said money for the ferry can be included in a federal transportation improvement program funding application. Since the ferry is one of the few, if not the only, cable-driven ferries remaining in the United States, it is historic and could qualify for 100 percent funding with no local match required, alliance officials said.

Alliance Chairperson Tammy Shell, executive director of Fayette County’s Office of Planning, Zoning and Community Development, suggested replacing the ferry because its age makes it difficult to repair.

Luzerne Township Supervisor Ron DeSalvo also said the old ferry should be replaced.

Piper suggested applying for state funds to buy a new and larger boat when Gov. Rendell announces his economic stimulus proposal.

Matesic said she will talk to the Department of Transportation and the turnpike commission about placing electronic signs that indicate when the ferry is out of service at current expressway interchanges and other locations.

In other business, DiPietro told the board that the full SPC board will vote on the county’s long-range transportation plan July 28.

He said public hearings on long-range plans for each of the nine counties in the SPC will be held in June.