Up The Expressway

I wasn't able to attend Mayor Brewster's briefing session for public officials on the Mon-Fayette Expressway --- real life, surprisingly, has a tendency to bump aside work I'd like to do on the Almanac --- but Jen Vertullo of the Daily News had a nice story (subscribers-only link) in Tuesday's paper, and Eric Slagle followed up in Thursday's Post-Gazette.

Brewster and others called on leaders in Mon-Yough area municipalities to band together and pressure state and federal elected officials for money for property acquisition to push through the right-of-way from the Route 51 interchange in Large to the Parkway East in Monroeville.

If completed, the Mon-Fayette would bypass congested surface roads like routes 837, 48 and 51 and provide a high-speed link between the Parkway East and Interstate 68 in West Virginia. Brewster and others (notably the Mon Valley Progress Council, whose Joe Kirk has been lobbying for the highway's completion for decades) say the road is necessary to spur brownfield development.

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Boy, I have mixed emotions about this, and not only because my house is going to be one well-thrown jug of urine from the southbound lanes.

I love to drive, and I've done a fair amount of driving throughout the northeast in the past 10 years. I've been to garden spots like Akron, Dayton, Rochester, Buffalo, Wheeling and Youngstown. All of those towns have easy interstate highway access.

Youngstown, for instance, has a nice six-lane expressway cutting right through the middle of town. Dayton's at the junction of two interstates and also has a bypass. Yet you'd be hard pressed to find a town more downtrodden than Youngstown --- beaten up, like the Mon Valley, by the collapse of the steel industry in the late '70s. Dayton, which was once heavily reliant on jobs from "Generous Motors" subsidiaries like Frigidaire and Delco, hasn't bottomed out yet.

I've never seen any evidence that brownfield development in those places has been spurred by the expressways, and expressways sure didn't stop the rubber industry from moving out of Akron, or Kodak from laying off thousands of people in Rochester.

For a local example, take a ride down to Washington, Pa. (aka "Little Worshington"), which sits at the junction of two interstates÷one that runs all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and the other from coast-to-coast. The outskirts of Washington County are booming (mostly with retail development and McMansions) but the city has had blighted sections for a long time.

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My point, and I do have one, is that I don't see this toll road (the Angry Drunk Bureaucrat calls it the "Mo-Fo Excessway") as a cure for all of the problems facing the region.

In fact, I have a strong feeling that all the Mo-Fo will do is move people further out into mostly-rural places like Union Township and Nottingham Township. Suddenly you'll be able to work in the Golden Triangle and live in Gastonville, just as I-279 made it practical to live in Wexford or Cranberry.

But as far as I can tell, I-279 hasn't helped Pittsburgh's North Side at all --- and I don't think the Mo-Fo is going to provide much benefit to the communities it passes through. Commuters and long-haul truck drivers will barely pay attention to us as they whiz past (and I do mean whiz).

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There are many reasons companies don't want to locate here, but the quickest answer (in my humble opinion) is that it's harder to redevelop a brownfield than to plow up 40 acres of farmland somewhere and pave it.

Factor in the Mon-Yough area's reputation as a place with "high taxes, corruption and high crime" (three things that I think have been greatly exaggerated) and building an office park out in some pasture instead of McKeesport or Duquesne becomes an easy choice for corporate planners.

No highway is going to change that equation.

If the Turnpike Commission wants to sell the Mo-Fo as a way to bypass congested surface roads or to open up rural Washington and Fayette counties to development, that's fine. But trying to ram this through the Mon-Yough area as the be-all, end-all for economic development is suspect.

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If we want to spur economic development, I suspect we'd be better off trying to get our Mon-Yough area communities to adopt uniform zoning and planning codes and taxation rates, along with regional public safety and public works services.

And I still don't understand why we aren't marketing the entire McKeesport area --- not just the city or the school district --- with a unified effort. There are real housing bargains in the Mon-Yough district and a lot of cultural and educational amenities that make it an attractive place for middle-income people trying to start a family.

Instead of worrying about what the Turnpike Commission might or might not do, working on those issues might make Our Fair City and the surrounding communities a lot more attractive to potential residents.

And I'm not just saying that because I don't want to have a front yard full of trucker bombs.

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In Other News: McKeesport Recreation Committee's website reports that the Mon-Yough Riverfront Entertainment Council has been dissolved. The city recreation committee says it will do what it can to keep entertainment and cultural activities going.

This is sad news. We need more regional cooperation, not less, but good on the rec committee for stepping up, I guess.

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To Do This Weekend: The Mon Valley Youth Symphony Orchestra makes its public debut at 3 p.m. Sunday with a special concert at the First Free Evangelical Church, 4001 University Drive, with Maestro Bruce Lauffer of the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra conducting. Admission is free. Come out and support these great student musicians ... Speaking of student musicians, it's high school musical time, and McKeesport Area High School, 1960 Eden Park Blvd., is presenting "Crazy for You" at 7:30 p.m. tonight, tomorrow and Saturday. Admission is $7. East Allegheny High School, 1150 Jacks Run Road (Route 48) in North Versailles presents "Cinderella" tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for students and seniors. ... McKeesport Recreation Committee will hold an Easter egg hunt Saturday morning at the Jacob Woll Pavilion in Renzie Park (rain date is April 7). Check their website for details.