Jim Cuda of Blawnox delayed his Thursday morning trip into Pittsburgh until after rush hour. He wanted to give time for traffic to dissipate.
“I know it will be backed up from Delafield (Road),” he said, while fueling up at the GetGo gas station near The Waterworks mall.
He's noticed that outbound traffic stacks up more between Etna and the Highland Park Bridge since the completion of the Route 28 widening project.
“It seems like once you pass the Etna exit, you're going to be waiting,” Cuda said. “It's not long, it could be 10 minutes, but you get up (Route) 28 very quickly — and then you have to wait.”
Cuda isn't alone in his assessment. Since PennDOT completed the latest widening project on the Route 28 expressway, drivers have complained that traffic tie-ups near the Highland Park Bridge seem worse than ever.
It's frustrating for the 53,000 daily motorists who were promised that the seemingly endless construction on the highway was designed to make commuting easier.
And PennDOT officials confirmed the delays aren't just in motorists' heads.
“That makes sense because traffic was metered by the signals down below (near the 31st Street Bridge) so it had the chance to spread out,” said PennDOT District 11 Executive Dan Cessna. “Now, all the traffic can flow freely, and that's the first bottleneck.”
PennDOT is doing engineering work to determine what a reconfigured Route 28/Highland Park Bridge interchange would look like with two lanes inbound and outbound.
The goal is to add a second through-lane in both directions.
The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) includes $500,000 for pre-engineering work for the project. The TIP determines which highway projects get funding.
Cessna said PennDOT is working to get the project included in the next revision of the TIP, which comes in June.
He said the project is estimated to cost between $40 million and $50 million.
“So, it's not an inexpensive fix,” Cessna said. “There is an impact in that area — there are homes nearby and hillsides. We're working through those details right now.”
If money becomes available, the earliest a project would begin is 2019, Cessna said.
Even after more through lanes are added, there's no guarantee traffic won't continue to back up during rush hour. And, likely to the displeasure of commuters, they may have only themselves to blame.
One theory posits that drivers could be bringing the increased congestion on themselves by flocking to the highway since construction wrapped up last year.
The concept, known as “induced demand,” is sometimes cited in arguments against transportation infrastructure expansion.
An example of this was seen after PennDOT built Interstate 279 through the North Hills to I-79 near Cranberry in the late 1980s, said Randall Walsh, an associate professor in the economics department at the University of Pittsburgh.
“(Before) it was hard to get to the North Hills because you had to go on Route 8. Then, all of the sudden, you get a road up to all this beautiful farmland and people said, ‘Let's build houses out there.' And then, after you build all these houses, there's all these cars on 279.
“Even if you didn't have new houses, before you built it, everyone is going one way. The drivers say, ‘Hey, here's this open road; why would I go out of my way?'”
Walsh said the latter is likely true for Route 28. Once construction wrapped up, drivers stopped using Butler Street through Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood as their alternate route, resulting in more vehicles on the expressway.
“I doubt seriously this is a big surprise for the traffic planners,” Walsh said. “Even if you made another lane, the congestion would still be there.”
Still, the widened Route 28 has its fans.
Richard Linden, who makes the drive from Green Tree to the Alle-Kiski Valley during non-peak traffic times, said he certainly appreciates the improved travel lanes closer to the city.
“It's wide open for me,” he said. “It's better than it was.”
Suzanne Guerrero of Harmar said she feels traffic flows better on Route 28 as well. She occasionally drives her husband to work and said the inbound Highland Park interchange is “confusing,” but thinks traffic backups are worse only when there's a vehicle accident.
“It's all about luck,” she said.
Jodi Weigand is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-226-4702.
