Toast to new expressway
Tomorrow is cause for celebration. Another link in the economic development chain to revitalize Fayette County and the Mon Valley has been completed. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will host a gala opening day ceremony on the Mon-Fayette Expressway section between Interstate 70 in Washington County and Route 51 in Allegheny County. Fayette County had a similar ceremony when the Mason Dixon Link opened between Uniontown and the West Virginia border.
We will raise our glass and cheer for our Mon Valley neighbors this time and welcome them to celebrate with us next when ground is broken on the Uniontown to Brownsville link and when West Virginia completes the connection to Interstate 68 in Cheat Lake.
Days like Friday were decades in the making. Many who dreamed of an expressway through the Mon Valley to Pittsburgh are no longer with us. But their dream survived and it has grown to include a beltway reaching to Pittsburgh International Airport. Each segment such as the one to open Friday should work as a catalyst for the communities surrounding it in finally allowing them easy access to jobs, health care and education.
The benefits exponentially increase for the southwestern Pennsylvania region as each section is completed and added to the whole. All of the communities must remain tenacious in pursuing completion of the chain, even if it takes one link at a time.