A-15: A two-decade wait ends

More than 20 years ago, a section of highway was completed that connected U.S. Route 422 to the Judge J. Frank Graff Bridge. A route around the Edgewood intersection and Indiana Pike Hill was supposed to follow.

Tommorrow, more than 21 years after that road was opened, the road that was supposed to follow, the Kittanning Bypass, will be completed and ready for traffic.

It's hard to say who conceptualized a four-lane divided highway that was to run from Pittsburgh toward the points in the northeast, but even as early as the 1950s, people were looking for a better road through the Allegheny Valley.

Organizations such as the Kittanning Junior Chamber of Commerce began lobbying for such a road as early as 1953, according to Kittanning lawyer and former state Rep. John McCue.

The idea was based solely on the economic impact a highway like that would have, he said, drawing small industries, trucking terminals and warehouses along the route in places like Kittanning.

"We could never get anything going on it," he said.

As the era of trucking as a primary means of shipping began to rise in the 1950s and 60s, others began to realize another important reason for a new highway - trucks were barreling out of control down the steep grade of Indiana Pike Hill and into the sometimes-congested Edgewood intersection, often with horrible results.

In 1977, a stop-gap solution to the problem with "runaway" trucks was devised - placing a sandpile on the hill for trucks to safely crash into - rather than going full-tilt into the intersection.

Since the sandpile, the first of its kind in the United States, was installed more than 70 trucks have used it, including one in the past year.

Even before the installation of the sandpile, the process of building an Allegheny Valley Expressway was well underway, largely due to the late state Sen. Albert Pechan, who devised a unique way to get the highway built.

"His idea was, 'If we get some of these things built (in sections), someone will eventually have to connect to them," McCue said.

And so a piecemeal expressway began winding its way through Allegheny, Butler and Armstrong County, and often times large sections of highway sat empty, with no connection roads to access them.

As parts of the road did open, several major and key sections remained uncompleted, a stretch between Tarentum and Natrona Heights, called section 5; section A-14 (the Graff bridge and Garretts Run connections); and section A-15 (the Kittanning Bypass).

The first of these sections to be completed was the Graff bridge, which was officially dedicated on Oct. 5, 1976.

The fact that traffic could not access the bridge, leaving it towering over the Allegheny River empty, quickly earned it the nickname, "the bridge to nowhere".

At that event, which officially named the bridge after Arsmtrong County Judge J. Frank Graff, the judge himself offered words of optimism about the highway.

"I sincerely hope that this occasion today may in some small way furthers the efforts so we may have what we believe is coming to us, a bridge that has been unkindly called a bridge to nowhere would be called a bridge to somewhere - and that somewhere is prosperity."

Even then people in the area were asking for PennDOT to finish the highway, but the transportation department said its coffers were empty.

"It was always, we don't have the money," McCue said. "It was so hard to get things through. It's a matter of political clout."

Armstrong County, he said, did not have much.

And at that time in 1976, some predicted that until the A-15 was finished, the highways around Kittanning would remain dangerous.

"By not completing Section 15, traffic will funnel off the Garrett's run interchange and create a hazardous traffic problem at the Edgewood intersection at the bottom of Indiana Pike Hill," said then-County Commissioner Harry Fox.

It was a problem that county residents would not have to deal with for some time.

For four long years, the Graff Bridge stood, completed but unusable, because there was no way to get on it.

Finally, on Oct. 17, 1980, Section 14B, the Garrett's Run interchange, was complete and traffic was allowed to stream across the bridge.

"At least, this is the people's day, all citizens can rejoice," Fox said that day.

No one, however, had forgotten about A-15.

"Let us not stop here, we have an ongoing job to do with the completion of Section 15," said Ed Lattanzio of the Armstrong County Chamber of Commerce.

Allegheny Valley Expressway lobbyist Alexander Lindsay also pressed for the completion of A-15 that day, pointing out that without A-15, traffic from the bridge would only be "dumped on the death-trap hill."

When Section 5 of the highway was completed in the mid-1980s, the traffic on Route 28 and Route 422 grew, and so did the danger on the Indiana Pike Hill.

"It's simply astonishing to me, the number of near misses at that intersection," said Tom Bradigan, a leading member of the A-15 committee which was formed in 1984 by the late state Rep. Henry Livengood.

Bradigan said while the issue of economic development associated with the highway was uncertain, there was no doubt about safety concerns.

"The safety issue is not a maybe (like the economic issues)," he said.

Livengood and the members of the A-15 committee lobbied hard for the missing section of highway, often testifying a transportation hearings in Harrisburg.

"Safety has always been the number one emphasis of our testimony," Bradigan said.

The lobbying continued, the promises of A-15 kept coming, but there was still no road.

"We just kept pounding them," Bradigan said, adding that they were "unwilling to take no for an answer."

The turning point for the A-15, according to County Commissioner James Scahill came in 1994, when the A-15 was in danger of being removed from the Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP). The TIP is a 12-year outline of planned highways and improvements for PennDOT.

Scahill said then Secretary of Transportation Howard Yerusalim firmly stuck to funding for A-15, and may ultimately have saved the road.

Yerusalim, however, shys away from any credit.

"The credit really goes to this administration," he said, referring to former Gov. Tom Ridge and current Transportation Secretary Brad Mallory. "I see my role as a small role."

The official start of construction on A-15 began in March 2000.

In the end, the fight for A-15 turned out to be a lot of people playing a lot of different roles, all striving toward a common goal.

"It gives me and all of the community, I would hope, satisfaction," Bradigan said.

Perhaps, that is, the satisfaction of a decades-long dream finally coming to fruition.