Pittsburgh Magazine, August, 2002

Reprinted with permission

Infrastructural Deficit

The road to the future is paved with creative ideas – and thorny issues.

By Rich Lord

Infrastructure debates don’t draw legions of screaming fans.  And on a beautiful Wednesday evening, just a handful of citizens and local officials have come to the Westmoreland County Courthouse in Greensburg to root for road and bridge improvements.

But what the audience lacks in numbers, it makes up for in spirit.  Attendees urge the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission to speed up work on a proposed Allegheny River Bridge, break bottlenecks in New Kensington, widen Route 30 in North Huntingdon, improve access to Allegheny Ludlum’s mills and improve Rostraver’s narrow roads.  By the end of the evening, SPC transportation planner Ken Flack is on the ropes.  Flack’s employer divvies up the transportation dollars earmarked for Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Washington and Westmoreland counties, all of which want bigger pieces of a shrinking pie.  “There’s not enough money to keep the roads and bridges open that we have right now,” Flack pleads.

“If we’re spending all of our money just to stay alive, then where are we going to get the money to do the projects that will help us grow?” counters one audience member.

That’s the $33 billion question.  Why $33 billion?   That’s the amount regional leaders hope to spend on highways ($11.5 billion), public transit ($9.7 billion), water and sewer improvements ($10 billion), and lock and dam reconstruction ($1.8 billion) over the next decade or two.  Unfortunately, they don’t know where all of that money is going to come from.  And there’s vigorous debate over whether scarce infrastructure dollars should be used to open new territory to development, or go solely to existing communities. 

There is a growing consensus, though, on one thing:  The region needs a plan.  Who draws up that plan, and how, are issues that remain to be decided.  And you can bet the debate over those questions will involve some screaming.

Missing Money:

You probably don’t think about infrastructure until the bridge closes or the sewer backs up.  Fortunately, some people think infrastructure constantly.  And their think right now can be summed up in three words:  We’ve got problems.

The region’s roads and bridges are aging, and there’s not enough money to maintain them, says Ray Hack, who as engineer for District 110, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, is in charge of the highways in Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties.  Hack says it costs about $57,000 per mile per year to keep roads in top condition, but he gets only $43,000 per mile.  And with the federal and state governments trimming highway spending, the maintenance gap is likely to get worse. 

The region’s transit agencies are in no better shape.  “We don’t have all of the money necessary to even maintain the system, let alone build the infrastructure we’d like to have in place,” says Paul Skoutelas, chief executive officer of the Port Authority of Allegheny County.  Skoutelas doesn’t know how his agency will pay for a planned $390 million extension of the T to the North Shore and David L. Lawrence Convention Center, especially since the federal government has cut its share of the cost of transit projects from 80 percent to 60 percent.

Much of the regions’ sewerage is obsolete, and some 16 billion gallons of mixed rainwater and sewage flow, untreated, into local waterways annually.  The federal Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to sue.  (See “Drawing to a Flush,” May 2001.)

“Sewer and water infrastructure has a lot to do with the quality of our streams and rivers,” says Caren Glofelty, director of the Heinz Endowments Environmental Program, which helped fund a recent study of the region’s sewer crisis.  “We want to get the rivers to a point where they really can be used as a recreational amenity.”

The cost of a regionwide sewer fix could reach $10 billion, including $3 billion in the 83-community area served by the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority.

The locks that allow 275 million tons of cargo annually to ply the three rivers to the entire Ohio River navigation system are either undergoing renovations or in need of repair.  Three locks on the Monongahela are in the midst of a $705 million reconstruction, but the federal money needed to finish the job is flowing like a wadi, rather than a river, according to Barry Palmer, executive director of the Association for the Development of Inland Navigation in America’s Ohio Valley, or DINAMO.  Three Ohio River locks need a $1 billion facelift; one, the Emsworth lock is in an advanced stage of deterioration,” Palmer says.

Given federal and state cutbacks resulting from a slow economy and security costs, it will take some creative thinking to keep the region rolling, flushing and floating.  Fortunately, creativity is one thing that doesn’t seem to be in short supply.

Present Ideas:

To Ron Joseph, every missing on-ramp or closed bridge is money out of his company’s pocket.  Joseph is vice president for transportation, safety and maintenance at Moon-based FedEx Ground, whose delivery drivers log about 600 million miles a year.  “In the delivery business, time is money,” Joseph says.  For example, he says, “If you’re going from our office here to [Interstate] 79 north[bound], it takes 10 minutes extra because of those missing ramps” from the Parkway West to I-79.

PennDOT hopes to build those ramps in 2005, says Hack.  But imagine a Pittsburgh not only with more ramps, but with smarter transportation.  Picture a world in which drivers could get real-time, online info on the least congested route from home to office; look up at an overhead sign on the Parkway East and find out which downtown lots are full; and, later go online and see exactly which buses are where, so they can meet the 61C just in time to hitch a ride to Oakland for a meeting.

The result would be less traffic and less wear and tear on the region’s roads, and that’s the promise of Intelligent Transportation Systems.  SPC is looking to ITS to solve the hard math created by worsening congestion and stagnant highway budgets.  “It’s going to allow you to not have to use as much pavement,” says Jim Hassinger, SPC’s executive director.

The ITS effort has started modestly, with SPC’s encouraging municipalities to time their traffic lights better, working with PennDOT on its improved traffic monitoring system, and helping the Beaver County Transit Authority implement a bus-tracking system, and helping the Beaver County Transit Authority implement a bus-tracking system.  The big payoff may come when information-gathering devices along roads and in-transit vehicles and garages are linked to the Internet.  That’s a long way off.

Of course, that’s what people once said about maglev – and some are still saying it.  Futuristic maglev would send shuttles flying down magnetized guideways at speeds sometimes exceeding 300 mph from the Pittsburgh International Airport to downtown, Monroeville and Greensburg.  Monroeville-based Maglev Inc. is in competition with a Baltimore-D.C. consortium for a $950 million federal grant, which would go a long way toward covering the estimated $2.8 billion cost of the system.  But Washington’s focus on terrorism has temporarily derailed the maglev funding process.  Maglev has also run into opposition in some Westmoreland County communities, like Penn Township, where homeowners and officials believe property values near the elevated maglev track would plunge.  Maglev Inc. conducted a series of public meetings in June as part of the process required by the feds.

PAT is wrapping up work on the East Busway Extension set to open late this year, and a renovated South Hills T spur, which should open in 2003.  With federal funding on the decline, the next round of transit projects may have to be team efforts.  PAT is working with the Westmoreland county Transit Authority to study transit options in a swath from Pittsburgh to Greensburg, and is considering more bus links and commuter rail service.

Expect more cooperation between transit agencies, says Skoutelas.  “I foresee the day when we might get together to march on Washington,” he says, only half joking.

In the realm of the sewers, the march on Washington has already begun.  A report released in April by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Water and Sewer Project found that only through cooperation – both in the sewers and the halls of power – can the region contend with the sewer overflow problem (Disclosure:  This author served as a writing consultant on the report.)

If the region’s 1,000-odd municipalities, counties, water providers and sewer authorities work together to identify trouble spots, and then share expertise and money to fix them, they may be able to slash the $10 billion price tag, says Jan Lauer, senior project manager for the Pennsylvania Economy League, which staffed the Water and Sewer Project.  “If the communities used cooperative approaches, we could reduce the Alcosan amount alone from $3 billion to $1 billion,” Lauer says.

Charged with the task of convincing traditionally standoffish municipalities to cooperate is the Lawrenceville-based 3 Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program.  Starting with Alcosan’s area, the nonprofit (funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) is dividing the region into “basin groups” – collections of communities in the same watershed that that can team up to solve sewer problems.  The program has also won federal funds and distributed $6.6 million to municipalities for 31 projects, such as installing sewage-flow monitors in Monroeville, and exploring the use of wetlands and other natural features to clean up sewage-choked Nine Mile Run in Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg and Edgewood. 

That $6.6 million is a drop in the bucket of the bucket of the region’s needs, though.  So the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, Economy League and SPC have teamed up to identify 60 high-priority water and sewer projects, six in each of the SPC counties plus Lawrence and Somerset.  A new Chamber-run lobbying arm, the Federal Advocacy Initiative, is going after the federal funds needed to get those projects done – an average of $1.5 million per project.

“Congresspersons get mountains of requests, and they have to sort through the need and the politics and the issues,” says Lauer.  Do their homework for them, so goes the logic, and the politicians are more likely to come through with funding.

The model for the Federal Advocacy Initiative is DINAMO, a Chamber project launched 21 years ago to lobby for lock and dam funding.  By harnessing the political power of five states – Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana – DINAMO has reeled in some $5 billion in federal funds over its lifetime, says Palmer.  “Practically all of the [federal lock and dam] construction money is coming to our region,” he says.

If the group-lobbying approach works as well for sewers as it has for locks and dams, transportation may be next, says Chamber president Barbara McNees.  And if the region gets to the point where it is planning its road and sewer work cooperatively, and lobbying for the funding as a bloc, McNees says, it would seem natural to start working together to decide where and how to develop.

And then the games would really begin.

Needed:  A Plan

“Planning” says Jim DeAngelis, “is a contact sport.”  A retired University of Pittsburgh faculty member, now a certified planning consultant, DeAngelis plays a physical game; for instance, he’s the prime author of a report by the advocacy group Sustainable Pittsburgh that hip-checked the Mon-Fayette Expressway project (see “Paved With Good Questions,” below). 

DeAngelis is sipping a Starbucks coffee at The Waterfront, which he says is a model of planning.  The boroughs Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall agreed on a single set of standards for the development, shared the cost of some of the road infrastructure and agreed to split up the new tax revenue generated.  The resulting retail/housing/industrial development is proof of DeAngelis’ contention that where roads and sewers go, people and businesses flow.  An obvious corollary:  New infrastructure should be tailored to specific development goals.  In Southwestern Pennsylvania, though, that’s not usually the case.  “We don’t have anything resembling a systematic assessment of our needs for infrastructure,” DeAngelis says.

Instead, a mixture of merit, market, media and politics determines where roads and sewers go, virtually everyone interviewed for this story agrees.  “It really is who has the most convincing story, the loudest voice and the most political juice,” says DeAngelis.

There’s a growing consensus that the criteria should change.  Organizations ranging from the environmentally sensitive Sustainable Pittsburgh and the Heinz Endowments, to the growth-minded Allegheny Conference on Community Development are now calling for a comprehensive, regionwide plan outlining where development should occur, and what kind of infrastructure is needed to support it.  “In my personal opinion,” says McNees, “the highest and best [development] will only occur if we have regionwide land-use planning.”

A state law passed in June 2000, providing incentives for cooperation among municipalities, has helped spur some 172 mulitcommunity development agreements statewide.  But achieving regionwide cooperation won’t be easy.  For one thing, state law gives all zoning and planning power to the municipalities, and they’d have to give up some of their authority if a regional plan were to have any teeth.  Second municipalities are dependent upon property taxes, which gives them an incentive to compete for coffer-filling development, rather than cooperating.  Third, the region’s infrastructure is divided among more than 1,000 entities, from counties and municipalities to water and sewer authorities.

And fourth, there’s no consensus on what the plan should be.  Sustainable Pittsburgh advocates preservation of the environment, revitalization of older communities, and reuse of abandoned industrial sites, known as brownfields.  “Before you open up whole new areas to development, let’s redevelop the areas that once had bigger populations,” says Court Gould, executive Director of Sustainable Pittsburgh.

McNees counters that some companies prefer built-to-suite edifices in the suburbs.  “There are a lot of people who say we should do more of the brownfield, as opposed to the Greenfield [development],” she says.   “I maintain you should do both.  You can’t have a wardrobe with just one color suit.” 

Any forum charged with planning the region’s infrastructure and development would likely be a coliseum for developers, environmentalists, businesses, taxpayers and governments.  That suits DeAngelis fine.

“It would really make this region known,” he says, “for having an honest forum for dealing with very, very complicated issues.”

Rich lord is a regular contributor to Pittsburgh Prospects.  His last story was on airport-area development, in June.

Paved With Good Questions

Bounded by a railroad, a slag dump and sewage contaminated Nine Mile Run, the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Duck Hollow would seem an unlikely paradise.  But the 20-home community along the Monongahela River seems a haven for nature and neighborliness.  When the May 31 storms knocked trees across the lone road into the hollow, residents teamed up and cut their way out.  An though delivery drivers dread the low-slung trestles and narrow bridge that are the Hollow’s doorstep, the wild turkey, deer and herons feel right at home.

If the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission builds the northern segment of the Mon-Fayette Expressway, though, Duck Hollow will host thousands of cars per day.  They’ll whiz by on a 75-foot-high elevated roadway and might not even notice the hamlet below, but residents will have a hard time missing the concrete pillars that will divide their homes from the wooded riverside.

“It’s going to ruin my neighborhood, and it’s going to ruin the riverside,” says Hollow resident Dave Lipchak.  “You’re going to have access to the river, but why would you want to go there anymore?”

You might go there to work, suggests Joe Kirk, executive director of the pro-expressway Mon Valley Progress Council. Elsewhere, the Monongahela is lined with nine brownfields, in various states of redevelopment.  The expressway’s Y-shaped route from Morgantown, W.Va., to Duquesne, and then to Oakland on one arm and Monroeville on the other, would give businesses interested in relocating to those brownfields easy access to Pittsburgh, I-70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  “It would literally transform the economy of the Mon Valley from one that had been dependent on rail and river to one that can grow with highway access,” Kirk says.

The 24-mile northern leg, from Jefferson to Oakland and Monroeville, is part of a planned $4 billion, 100-mile network of toll roads that would eventually connect Morgantown, Pittsburgh, the Mon Valley and Pittsburgh International Airport.  At an estimated $1.9 billion, the northern segment is the most expensive section – and the most controversial.  Among the questions opponents and proponents are raising.

Will the expressway help or hurt communities in its path?

The pro-preservation, pro-environment group Sustainable Pittsburgh argues that the road would decimate Turtle Creek, which has already been gutted by highways, and rob Hazelwood of an opportunity to turn a former coke-plant site into a pedestrian-friendly housing community.

Tom Fox, public involvement manager for the Turnpike Commission, counters that the commission will “spend or do whatever it takes to work with these communities to make it an enhancement to these communities.”  For instance, plans call for relocating the Penn Plaza shopping Center in Turtle Creek and building large public plazas above the highway in Hazelwood.

Opponents also argue that highways drain people out of established communities and into new developments – a process called sprawl.  Proponents say more jobs and better access would encourage people to stay in the established communities along the expressway.

How would it affect the Mon Valley’s economy?

Kirk says that to compete in the era of just-in-time manufacturing, companies must have easy access to highways.  But Jim DeAngelis, a planning consultant who helped write a critical report on the expressway for Sustainable Pittsburgh, says stopping the expressway at Braddock would still give the Mon Valley access to I-70 without harming Turtle Creek, Hazelwood and other communities.

“There’s no evidence that these links, from [Braddock] to Pittsburgh, have merit,” says DeAngelis.  “There’s no economic analysis that indicates that.”

Who’s going to pay for it?

The turnpike has just $291 million of the $1.9 billion it needs to build the northern segment.  Opponents argue that the agency shouldn’t start buying properties and demolishing homes until it has found all of the money needed to finish the job.  Fox says that the $291 million is enough for five years of design work and property acquisition.  As for the construction money, Fox says, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

The Turnpike Commission is accepting comments on the proposed northern segment of the Mon-Fayette Expressway through Sept. 9.  To weigh in, write to:  David P. Willis, environmental manager, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, P.O. Box 67676, Harrisburg, Pa. 1716-7676.