Expressway costs may be increased
At 81, Al Ferrari has seen a lot of things.
Ferrari, a Mon Valley businessman and member of the Mon Valley Progress Council, was alive for the Great Depression, World War II and the assassination of a president. In his life, the atom was split, a vaccine for polio was found and man walked on the moon.
But he hasn't seen the opening of the Mon-Fayette Expressway or the Southern Beltway. Parts of the expressway are open, but none of the beltway is even under construction - yet.
"I want to live long enough to see it done," he told members of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission during a hearing on proposed amendments to the commission's plan on the projects, amendments that would raise the projects' price tag to nearly $4 billion. Business owners continue to say that the projects would be beneficial to the Mon Valley at whatever the cost, but some residents think the toll roads will do more harm than good.
A hearing Thursday night was the first of three scheduled on the amended financial plans. The second will be 6 p.m. Thursday at courthouse square in Greensburg and the third will be at 5 p.m. Jan. 29 on the 31st floor of the Regional Enterprise Tower, 425 Sixth Ave., Downtown.
The Mon-Fayette Expressway is a proposed 75-mile toll road from Interstate 68 in West Virginia through Fayette County and the Mon Valley into Pittsburgh, connecting with the Parkway East on either side of the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. The Southern Beltway is a proposed toll road from State Route 60 at Pittsburgh International Airport through northern Washington County and connecting with the expressway.
Estimates for the construction plan were made three years ago based on cost-per-mile construction. Many costs were unknown because a route wasn't nailed down yet, said Frank Kempf, assistant chief engineer for the state Turnpike Commission.
In the time since, the $3.25 billion estimate has increased to almost $4 billion because of the last and most important leg of the expressway - the link from State Route 51 to the Parkway East.
Earlier estimates put the cost of that section at $1.2 billion, or more than a third of the total cost. By current estimates, that section now costs $1.8 billion, or nearly half of the total cost of the project.
Frank Irey, president of the Mon Valley Progress Council, said the estimated cost for the expressway was about $35 million per mile. But when it was first proposed in the 1950s, it could have been built for a sliver of that cost.
"Had we built this in the '50s, it would've cost $1 million per mile," Irey said.
But Conseulo Fussum is no fan of the beltway, no matter the cost.
She lives in Glencannon, a housing development in North Strabane Township that is home to about 500 people.
Turnpike Commission planners have proposed a variety of routes to address the problem of crossing Canonsburg Lake, a manmade lake in Peters and North Strabane. One route that would not cross the lake would go through the Glencannon development.
Fussum wanted to be a voice at the hearing not just for the people who could be displaced by the toll road but also for those who will have to deal with it even though they are not displaced.
"How is this going to be beneficial to our community?" she asked.
