Musings on the Mon-Fayette
I’ve been assigned to UPMC McKeesport this month, which lies at the very end of the 61C. I’ve been spending a good chunk of an hour each morning and evening on that bus, watching the old grey steel towns slip past the window. (I spend an even larger chunk going absolutely nowhere on the Homestead High-Level Bridge, but that’s another matter.) A few days, I drive instead because I’ve got to get somewhere quickly in the middle of the day. Either way, it’s gotten me to thinking: how could we get more Pittsburghers to spend dollars in these communities to give them an economic boost?
One obvious thing that’s needed: make it easier to get there. The roads to the Mon Valley communities are two-lane, heavy with traffic lights, and not fast-moving. I now understand why the community leaders here think they need a highway. They have a specific highway in mind — the much-discussed Mon-Fayette Expressway. This road comes up every couple of months if you dabble in Pittsburgh politics. The planners of PennDOT and the Southwestern PA Commission want it built, because they have Federal matching dollars that can only be used for it. The fine young progressives of Pittsburgh, including Bill Peduto, have been loudly against the Mon-Fay as promoting sprawl and the hollowing out of our urban core (it’d help form a beltway around the city).
I’m no particular fan of highways or sprawl. Still, when I look West towards the airport, I see thriving businesses that feed off the airport, Robinson Town Centre, and the combination of the Parkway and the 28X. When I look southeast, I see lots of available cheap land, already built up with streets and sewerage, and Kennywood as a built-in draw. It makes me wonder whether a bit of sprawl might be a fair price to pay for bringing some of our almost-dead towns back to life.
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I seriously doubt the life-giving power of a highway, especially with gas prices trending up each year. I also suspect you’ll see the prosperity of the western suburbs suffer as gas prices hit $5, $10 a gallon.
Also, it’s not just “fine young progressives of Pittsburgh” who oppose the highway, it’s also towns whom you allege will benefit from the highway.
But you are right, it should be “easier to get there”. Instead of wasting $3,000,000,000 on a highway, why not use that money to invest in reliable and sustainable rapid transit? It will connect the towns with the population in sustainable way and at a fraction of the cost. Win/win.
Highways are not just for cars to run on. One of the reasons the bus ride down there takes an hour is that the bus is constantly stopped at traffic lights or caught in traffic. An expressway offers the option for express service with local feeder routes.
There is also a certain amount of realpolitik in my thinking here. A light-rail network linking our region would, indeed, be better. Unfortunately, few of our local leaders are interested, and Harrisburg certainly isn’t. They *are* interested in building highways. The way I see it, the perfect should not become the enemy of the good.
Buses are inherently flawed rapid transportation for the very reason you mention. It will only be a matter of time before the expressway is also full of traffic. Guaranteed. Come visit Seattle sometime if you don’t believe me.
I guess I’m less inclined to settle for the “good”, myself. You’ve got a great medium with Metblogs to change public opinion. Use it to fight for the perfect instead of settling for the good.
Sustainable rapid transit, while a good idea in pretty much every way, doesn’t mix well with the Pittsburgh culture. The extension of the city’s light rail system is a boondoggle already, and construction has just begun. It’s highways for us, and no amount of blogging is going to rip up the blue collar roots around here. There are better, more efficient ways to handle traffic than by dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a system nobody will use.
But will people use it when gas is no longer affordable? Because, like it or not, this is the future. Ever heard of Hubbert’s Peak?
Plus, I can still think of several billion reasons to not build a new highway, especially when, as I understand it, many of your existing roads and bridges are falling apart.
And don’t underestimate the power of the blog. :)
You offered up an interesting dialogue here.
The roads south of Pittsburgh are grossly inadequate.