September 04, 2007
Build The Mo-Fo Already
I came to a reluctant epiphany on I-79 last week. It's something I didn't want to admit, but in my corroded, embittered heart, I know it to be true.
The Mon-Fayette Expressway has to be built.
Yes, I have questioned the idea, and I agree with the Angry Drunken Bureaucrat, who calls it "the Mo-Fo Excessway."
I think the highway's negatives are very, very high.
But it doesn't matter, because people like high-speed, limited-access highways. They have for 75 years. And until they are forced by circumstances to use some other form of transportation, they will continue to prefer driving their personal cars on limited access highways.
. . .
No Alternative: Sorry, but I don't see any viable alternatives:
- Light-Rail: I love light-rail. I think Port Authority missed the boat (bus?) by not building a high-density light-rail line instead of the East Busway. In a highly traveled corridor like the one between Downtown Pittsburgh, Oakland and the East Hills, light-rail would rock; it excels at moving masses of people from Point A to Point B.
But it stinks when lots of small numbers of people are making lots of trips to a variety of different points. That's why it's no substitute for a limited-access, high-speed highway in the Mon-Yough area.
- ĪHeavy Railā: I love trains, too. But the railroads that own most of the tracks in the Mon Valley (CSX and Norfolk Southern) don't want passenger trains on their lines.
Amtrak was created specifically so freight railroads wouldn't have to run passenger trains any more. Wondering why Amtrak trains always seem to run late? By law, freight trains have priority; Amtrak trains are only tenants on the tracks, and as any train buff tell you, the freight railroads don't miss many opportunities to screw up Amtrak.
- Buses: Buses combine the joys of traveling in a crowded, smelly elevator with the inconvenience of getting your grandpa to drive you to work. Nobody willingly gives up a car to ride the bus. The bus is a public necessity because many people cannot drive, but it is not a highway alternative.
- Maglev: Don't make me laugh. Maglev Inc. has wasted public and private money for almost 20 years without producing so much as a Lionel train. I have become firmly convinced that maglev, at least in Pennsylvania, is a perpetual motion machine powered by hot air.
- Water Taxis, Car-Sharing, Bike Trails, Etc.: Sure, and why not personal jet-packs or self-propelled auto-gyros, too? Or giant pneumatic tubes to shoot people from McKeesport to the airport, where friendly dragons will fly us to Candy Land?
. . .
Highways Are Rotten, But...: I can think of 1,000 reasons why highways are bad ideas:
- They Squander Oil: Not only do we need oil to run the cars and trucks, we need oil to pave the darn highways. It's really wasteful.
- They're Maintenance Headaches: As Joe Grata pointed out in the Post-Gazette a few weeks ago, whenever we build new roads or bridges, we leave the old ones intact. Thus we keep increasing our maintenance headaches and adding to the infrastructure we have to maintain. For that reason ...
- They Squander Tax Money: This should be obvious. We keep adding maintenance burdens faster than revenues can match them; liquid fuel taxes don't cover a fraction of the cost of building, maintaining, and providing emergency services for highways.
- They Enable Sprawl: Building highways allows population to disperse thinly throughout an area, which requires more infrastructure, which wastes more oil and tax money.
As Braddock Mayor John Fetterman has noted, highways also destroy a sense of community by allowing the "haves" (people with cars) to get further away from the "have-nots."
But it doesn't change the basic equation. People still like to drive on highways. Given a choice between working, living and shopping in places with highways, and places without highways, Americans overwhelmingly choose the former.
. . .
ĪPeak Oilā: Depending on which alarmist you prefer, we have 20, 30, 40 or 50 years before pumping oil out of the ground and turning it into fuel becomes too expensive, and the current car-based economy collapses.
Human beings are very bad at looking at long-term consequences. Their thinking is, "In 50 years, I'll be dead."
So: Arguing against highways on the basis of the long-term negative consequences might make you feel morally superior, but it won't convince the vast American public to move to a place without highways.
And if we wait 20, 30, 40 or 50 years to build the Mo-Fo, hoping that something else will come along, McKeesport, Duquesne and Clairton will be dead, too.
. . .
Get Here From There: I tell people that it takes me only about 15 minutes to get from Pittsburgh to McKeesport or most other places in the Mon Valley. I might as well give directions for driving from Jupiter to the Moon.
They don't want to hear about Irvine Street or Camp Hollow Road or Commercial Avenue. They want to know: "What exit do I take?" And to most non-natives, getting to McKeesport from the Parkway East seems like a terrible ordeal.
The last best hope for the Mon-Yough area is to serve as a bedroom community for people who work in Downtown Pittsburgh, Oakland, Monroeville, Cranberry, McMurray and elsewhere.
We have an abundance of inexpensive housing. We have recreational, cultural and educational institutions; we have hard-working people; we have beautiful vistas to see.
But because we don't have a major highway, 95 percent of the people who might like to relocate their family or their business to the Mon Valley never even visit.
. . .
By Any Other Name: My fellow expressway skeptic ADB actually floated an interesting idea last week as an alternative to the Mo-Fo: "acquire all the properties in the right of way, move them 50 ft. back and build a four-lane neighborhood boulevard."
I like it, even if the idea was meant sarcastically (the Bureaucrat also suggested that we "throw in a light rail line down the middle and give everyone a gold sovereign").
But when it comes right down to it, it's still a highway. Less objectionable in many ways, but still a highway. (And eventually, it would start to look like McKnight Road.)
So I'm gagging as I'm writing this, but I know it's true, and you do, too:
We are wasting time by looking for non-existent alternatives that may never come. Elected officials: Find a way, and just build the damned expressway.
OK, commenters. Now tell me I'm full of it.
Posted by jt3y at September 4, 2007 07:36 AMYou've got the name wrong: it's the Mon Valley BYPASS. The entire project is a gift to developers who wish to turn Fayette County into Cranberry Twp. It will ensure that the Mon Valley is dead, forever and ever, as people zip pass it to their McMansions in Fayette. The whole purpose of exurban development is to exploit the resources of a city without paying for them. Need high-tech medical care? Sure thing, drive up to Pittsburgh. Want to put your kids in private school? Sure thing, drive up to Pittsburgh. Want to send them to college? Sure thing, drive up to Pittsburgh. Want to see a concert, attend a play, go to a ball game? Sure thing, drive up to Pittsburgh. Want to help pay for those things? No way, that's why we live in (fill in the blank).
Posted by: Traveler at September 4, 2007 12:49 PMBrilliant essay. And damnably hard to dispute, also.
I suppose an alternate solution would be DON'T DO ANYTHING. I appreciate your point about our fetish for high speed highways right now ... but is there any CLAMOR for more traffic between the regions it services? And if there is, what is the quality of the clamor?
And if you need another tiebreaker ... these things cost money. LET'S RESOLVE TO DO NOTHING.
Posted by: Bram R at September 4, 2007 11:15 PMWe did have rail service until sometime in the 1980's or 90's. I can remember as a teenager taking the train from McKeesport into Pittsburgh for the day.
Posted by: Scott at September 5, 2007 06:55 AMToo bad we can't demonstrate how essential the Mon-Fayette expressway is to the War on Terrorism. Get some Homeland Security bucks. Maybe we need to protect the jetpack factory you guys are going to build as an alternative to the Mon-Fayette expressway (thus creating a time loop that would eventually result in Scott Bakula showing up in town to shoot a pilot).
Posted by: Ed Heath at September 5, 2007 08:46 AMHoly cow.
The roads in the Mon Valley are crap largely because of the money that's been diverted away from them for the Mon-Fayette. This one project has been on the books so long, and it's sucked all the air out of any kind of land-use or transportation planning in the Valley -- to the point where now it's the only thing on the table.
The thing is, it's not really on the table.
1. We can't afford it. Floating a bond for $3.6 billion, which is what the MF leg to Pittsburgh/I376 would cost, would ultimately cost the Turnpike (and by extension, PA taxpayers) $235 million a year for 30 years. Getting Harrisburg to approve a toll on users of I-80 in order to raise just $750 million for highway/bridge maintenance and public transit STATEWIDE was like pulling eye-teeth, and even then the amount they approved was less than half what the Governor's Transportation Funding & Reform Commission recommended as the minimum needed to just cover our asses, er, assets. No way will anyone be willing to sign on the dotted line for an additional $235 million/year for a project that will only "benefit" a small corner of the state. The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission had to put $19 billion worth of unmet maintenance and operations needs for roads, bridges and public transit on their "illustrative projects" list in the last long-range plan -- stuff they wish they could do in the next 30 years, but they don't have the money. It's not a joke. The money really isn't there.
2. It doesn't fit with the regional plan. You may say it's too late to think about planning for post-peak oil and halting sprawl, but the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission just finished its regional visioning process and found that pretty much everyone in SWPA wishes we would prioritize infill and transit-oriented development. Like Traveler said above, this project is and always has been about development in Fayette County, new suburbias where currently there's just cornfield. That's totally contrary to the SPC's long range plan.
3. It'll never pass muster for federal air quality standards. The Liberty-Clairton non attainment area is already off the charts with their PM 2.5 particle pollution, and the Pittsburgh leg of the MFX is proposed to go right through it.
4. Even if some sucker wrote the Turnpike a $3.6 billion check tomorrow, and waved away any of the legal hurdles with a big ol' magic wand, there's no way the Pittsburgh leg could be finished in less than 15 years -- probably more like 20. It's that big, it's that complicated, there's that many objections to the project in its right-of-way, and furthermore the railroads in the right-of-way aren't returning the Turnpike's calls. There's a whole bunch of issues that would have to be ironed out before they could even get started, and construction itself could take 10 years. If you think McKeesport, Clairton & Duquesne will be dead by then, why bother building the road at all?
So: all of this to say, it's just plain irresponsible and unfair of the toll road boosters to be spending all this effort to drum up support for this project now, when there's just simply no way it'll ever get built. They're diverting attention away from the real work that needs to be done, and they're stringing good people along with a whole bunch of false promises and hooey.
Since the local mills are mostly gone and most people in the Valley now have to commute to get to work, it seems like the biggest need is for better commuter options -- and an expressway isn't the best commuter option. Rapid transit is ultimately less expensive, more sustainable, and more efficient.
But the existing roads and bridges in the Valley need a lot of love, anyway. 51, 837, the Glassport-Elizabeth Road, Braddock Ave., not to mention the McKeesport-Duquesne Bridge, etc., etc. -- you know how awful they all are. You really want to put the MFX ahead of repairs and improvements there for another 30 years? Because it really is a choice between one and the other -- you can't have both.
Posted by: Andrea at September 5, 2007 10:30 AMAndrea, I agree with everything you say.
But I'm going to repeat: It doesn't matter. The public can understand highways. They can't understand particulate PPM from Clairton Works, or the benefits of in-fill development, or anything else.
As for greenfield development ... most people LIKE greenfield development. They LIKE suburban sprawl.
When I talk to people in my demographic looking to buy a house, a large percentage of them want a NEW house in a new development: "Ew, I don't want to live in someone else's old house."
So, we can make 1,000 rational, reasonable arguments against sprawl, and they will still go looking for a house in a new Ryan Homes development in a cornfield somewhere ... next to a highway off-ramp.
Is it insanity? Yes. But is it the way the free market has moved for the last 50 years? Also yes.
I don't know how to fight the tide.
Posted by: Webmaster at September 5, 2007 10:35 AMThat's just it, though - there is no tide -- there's just a lot of hot air. What's needed is for sensible folks to start calling the MVPC's bluff. Whether or not people want it, it's just never going to be built.
The real problem is the persistence of this vision, which is total fantasy -- the idea that we could ever have this expressway that would solve our transportation needs and rescue the Valley from its decline, or that we can all have new houses in the suburbs and somehow still afford to pay for the public services we all use every day. It's a hallucination that gets in the way of people seeing where they're going, and it makes it harder to actually solve the real problems we're all dealing with, here.
I mean, heck: until the Turnpike convened those Design Advisory Teams, no one in Duquesne or Turtle Creek or Braddock had ever participated in any kind of land use planning process. But instead of expending all that effort to figure out how to accommodate an imaginary expressway, which is just a waste of everyone's time, why not figure out what kind of economic development people really need and want, and then decide what kind of transportation investment would really serve that vision best?
So: call the bluff. Trust your feelings. Come back from the dark side.
People don't really like sprawl. They just don't necessarily see the collective effect of their individual desires. It doesn't help if leadership isn't willing to talk turkey about real costs. Look at what W's tax cuts and delusional talk about bringing democracy to the Middle East has brought us. Is it really better to just let everyone persist in believing this kind of vision is achievable and that the costs are somehow worth it, even though the suffering is ultimately pointless?
Sorry, I know that's probably overly dramatic, but gosh darn it, we're talking about the future of the Mon Valley, here. This isn't academic. Sure, I think the road is an awful project; but on some level the mere idea of it is almost as bad as the road itself -- it's fooled thousands of people into deferring needed investment, impoverishing their own neighborhoods and wasting years and years waiting for Godot. IT WILL NEVER BE BUILT. We need to get over it, or we'll all end up looking around for trees to hang ourselves on. (pace, Mr. Beckett.)
one other thing - those Ryan home plantations aren't just spontaneously popping out of the earth. without expressways, there's no market to support them.
ya gotta consider who's really backing this project. it's not the good folks of the Mon Valley. this project is pure pork, and the hogs at the trough are the bond traders. the construction guys would be just as happy to work on fixing roads as building new ones -- but there's more money for the white collar engineers and LOTS more money for folks like RRZ if the Turnpike gets to put us all into hock for another generation making pretty designs for big concrete monstrosities, whether or not they ever get built.
don't give up, Jason!
Posted by: andrea at September 5, 2007 01:58 PMI hate the Mon Valley (bypass) Toll Road. By all means, we need to stop it from hitting the city of Pgh. We need to stop it wherever.
It isn't prudent.
If people want to live in a new home, that can be done in the city and in plenty of other more urban settings.
The talk of HEAVY RAIL as an alternative would be welcomed. The freight lines can often be diverted. We've got plenty of lines. We have a glut of lines. I think they can live in harmony. Other cities have trains. And the line from McKeesport didn't stop just at Station Square -- it went to Sewickley (years ago).
PA Turnpike makes new PA toll roads. Go figure. PAT (a bus company) isn't well suited for light rail either. Go figure. We can do better and think again about rail, the rails for human cargo, and freight elsewhere.
Posted by: Mark Rauterkus at September 13, 2007 04:14 PM"Is it insanity? Yes. But is it the way the free market has moved for the last 50 years? Also yes.
I don't know how to fight the tide."
3. some billion in tax money doesn't have a lot to do with the free market.
You fight the tide by fighting the tide, otherwise you are just part of it.
Posted by: John Morris at September 13, 2007 07:17 PM