Quote:
Originally Posted by Private Dick
Constantly claim that there isn't enough funding for infrastructure improvements so the lobby for more and more and more transportation funding continues on, then when the money is allocated, spend it on new infrastructure projects that are deemed "priority", leaving repairs and improvements to existing infrastructure to a year-to-year patchwork "plan" that never really addresses needs.
|
I agree, but oddly, I keep hearing on another forum that modernizing the Parkway West isn't needed, even though it's existing infrastructure, and was functionally obsolete the moment it opened 60 years ago.
I'd rather the Parkway West be modernized than the Mon-Fayette Expressway be completed, but different transportation agencies have different ideas, it seems. The Mon-Fayette Expressway is the domain of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, so PennDOT really can't do anything about it. Unfortunately, what PennDOT is doing on the Parkway West right now solves nothing because it doesn't correct any of the highway's fundamental design flaws, like ramps that are too short, a median that's too narrow, etc. It doesn't have to be a 10- or 12-lane behemoth, but six lanes with adequate shoulders and interchanges that aren't stupid seems like a reasonable goal to me, especially since it's the city's grand entrance.
One thing I'd like to see is the Parkway West eventually become a multimodal transportation corridor between Carnegie and the airport. The West Busway already ends at Carnegie via the Wabash Tunnel, and the T can come from the West End via Crafton, so I think the Busway and the T ought to run together alongside a modernized, six-lane Parkway West all the way to the airport. Maybe have two T lines with one being an express line to downtown, and the other having stops in Robinson, Crafton and the West End, among other places potentially.
As for the Mon-Fayette Expressway, it's worth noting that its proposed alignment north of its current terminus runs mostly through sparsely-populated hollows, so most of the property impact would be to small industrial sites. The only residential area that would be impacted would be Turtle Creek in the vicinity of Thompson Run. Not necessarily trying to justify the project, just saying that it's hyperbole to imply that hundreds of people would be forced out of their homes if the highway ever gets built. Maybe a couple dozen in Turtle Creek, but otherwise the highway would follow hollows and a portion of the Tri-Boro Expressway that's already close to Interstate grade as it is. And for what it's worth, the segment of the Mon-Fayette Expressway into the city of Pittsburgh is officially dead. The Turnpike Commission scrapped it.
Prev
Linear Mode
