Penn Future report full of contradictions, errors
The recent Penn Future report on the Mon-Fayette and Southern Beltway highway projects is flawed, erroneous and misleading. Anyone who claims that building a modern highway link in our region will hurt our economy is either misinformed or bent on misinforming others.
In truth, a modern highway will provide improved access to regional, national and international markets. It will significantly improve the economic competitiveness of businesses in the expressway corridor and attract new firms to abandoned industrial sites in our region.
The Penn Future report is also flawed in accepting one agency’s projected loss in manufacturing employment as a rationale to halt progress on the expressway project. Even if one accepts the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission projection of a 42,000 loss in manufacturing employment over the next 25 years, it is an even stronger reason to press forward on the expressway project and other efforts to keep those jobs here. I suppose Penn Future would rather just throw in the towel and watch those jobs go to other areas.
In fact, this new expressway is the cornerstone of an overall strategy aimed at helping our current manufacturers and attracting new firms.
One need only examine a recent Mon Valley Progress Council study that shows industrial park activity adjacent to 12 miles of the expressway in Washington and Fayette County. To date, just this small slice of the corridor has attracted 14 companies, 694 jobs and $31.7 million in private investment. The companies estimate that they will generate an extra 2,144 jobs in the future.
Just imagine how many more businesses, jobs and regional economic opportunities will be generated when the expressway and beltway projects are fully completed.
Every credible transportation and job creation expert has already rejected Penn Future’s tired, old “no build” option. Do we really want a group that has never created a job, telling us how to create jobs? Let me briefly discuss a few other errors in the Penn Future report.
Its contention that this toll road would hinder the development of brownfields is ludicrous and exposes the group’s flawed understanding of economic development. The PA Route 51 to I-376 expressway corridor has one of the highest concentrations of developable, brownfield sites in America. Based on studies sponsored by area realtors and the Allegheny Conference, the lack of highway access to these developable sites puts southwestern Pennsylvania at a clear competitive disadvantage.
I also fail to see the logic in the report’s finding that this new and modern roadway will cause congestion. If the highway does nothing for economic development, as the report claims, then how would it also cause more congestion?
In truth, even with the expanded economic activity, professional traffic modeling does not point to any congestion problems on the roadway. These industry models actually show that a completed expressway would significantly reduce traffic congestion, especially on the Parkway East corridor.
I am baffled by Penn Future’s proposal to simply upgrade our existing roadways. National surveys have continually criticized the Pittsburgh region as having among the worst and most antiquated roadway systems in the country. Why would anyone want to invest in more of the same? Extensive and mandated planning has already determined that upgrades to our existing road network would not significantly address traffic congestion and safety issues.
The future is not a carbon copy of the past. We must recognize that access is a crucial element of economic development. If we back away from the Mon Valley Expressway plan, we back away from safer and faster highways, helping existing businesses expand, attracting new businesses, revitalizing old industrial eyesores and generating good jobs for our citizens.
Let’s look ahead, not back
Sen. Richard A. Kasunic is a Democrat representing Fayette County.