• PennDOT says $241M not enough for all needed projects,

Forced to postpone several area projects

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation expects to start about 50 projects that will cost about $241 million in Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties this year.

But on a day when President Joe Biden was in the Pittsburgh area to announce a national infrastructure program, District 11 Executive Cheryl Moon-Sirianni spent almost as much time talking Wednesday about work the agency won’t be able to do because of funding shortfalls. Ms. Moon-Sirianni said the agency has to postpone $80 million to $100 million of additional work it had planned for this year because it can’t pay for the projects.

And that doesn’t includes dozens of other projects worth hundreds of millions the district should be doing, she said.

The funding shortfall is attributed to a reduction in driving during the COVID-19 pandemic because the agency gets about 75% of its money from the gasoline tax. It expects to lose about $500 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, although about $410 million will be made up through the federal stimulus bill passed in December.

“Our construction program is taking a bit of a hit,” Ms. Moon-Sirianni said. “There are still going to be a lot of needs when we are done.”

Ms. Moon-Sirianni said the agency should be paving some roads every five to seven years, but some are 15 years or more behind schedule.

“That’s not the way we

should do business,” Ms. Moon- Sirianni said. “We’re struggling.”

As a result, the district is taking interim steps to extend the life of some roads and bridges until the proper work can be done.

For example, on Constitution Boulevard between South Heights and Monaca in Beaver County, crews will use a process known as microsurfacing — adding about 2 inches of tar and chip material with epoxy — to save money, Ms. Moon-Sirianni said. The goal is to improve that road and several others like it temporarily for as long as five years until the agency has the money for full repaving.

Microsurfacing will cost $4 million to $5 million while full resurfacing would cost two or three times that amount.

The agency also will repair road joints at dozens of sites on area interstates because it doesn’t have funds for full repaving, Ms. Moon-Sirianni said.

“We’re going to fix as many joints as we can to extend the life of the highways,” she said.

As a result of gas tax receipts remaining lower than normal and a $400 million annual payment from the Pennsylvania Turnpike for public transit set to expire in mid-2022, Gov. Tom Wolf has appointed a commission to develop a new method of funding transportation by August.

Statewide, PennDOT has said it has only $6.9 billion of the $15 billion it needs every year to properly maintain the state’s roads and bridges.

Ms. Moon-Sirianni said she is “very optimistic” that Congress will approve some form of Mr. Biden’s proposed $2 trillion infrastructure proposal. Her staff would have projects ready quickly if money becomes available, she said.

“We’ve [ responded quickly] before and we can do it again,” she said. “We will welcome any money they want to send our way for infrastructure improvements.”

Most of the new work in this area — 40 projects worth about $200 million — will be concentrated in Allegheny County. There also will be six projects in Beaver County worth about $37 million and four in Lawrence County worth about $4 million.

Work also will continue on dozens of other projects that began in previous years.

The most extensive new project will be the rehabilitation of bridges and paving on Interstate 79 between Neville Island and Interstate 279. The project, expected to cost $35 million to $40 million, will include one bridge rehabilitation and four deck replacements.

That work will be coordinated with the continuation of the $42.2 million rehabilitation of the I-79 bridge over Neville Island and a $6 million to $7 million project to pave Route 65 from that bridge in Glenfield to River Avenue in Sewickley.

Getting to Kennywood Park will be a challenge at times this season because of one continuing project and a new one.

Work continues to replace the Kenmawr Avenue Bridge between Swissvale and Rankin, the main route to get to the amusement park from the Parkway East. Traffic has been using a temporary bridge, but South Braddock Avenue approaching the bridge will be closed for 45 days this spring while crews raise the level of the road to meet the new bridge, which was raised to allow double-stacked rail cars to pass under it.

Kennywood traffic will be detoured to the Homestead exit. The department will monitor traffic conditions once the work starts and deploy police officers to help traffic if necessary.

Without the temporary bridge at Kenmawr, the road would have been closed for 18 months to two years while the new bridge was built, said Jason Zang, who oversees construction projects in the district.

Additionally, work to rehabilitate the bridge on Route 837 in West Mifflin near Commonwealth Avenue, which provides access to the amusement park from the other direction, will cause single-lane traffic restrictions. That’s a $5.97 million project.

Another major project that won’t begin until late in the year is more than $30 million worth of work to improve a series of ramps around the inbound exit off the Parkway East to the Boulevard of the Allies, including above the Birmingham Bridge. That complicated project will take several years and involve long-term traffic disruptions on the boulevard, Parkway East and other nearby roads.

Other new Allegheny County projects include:

• Paving Route 28 from Delafield Avenue to RIDC Drive, eliminating the last major bottleneck on that road by creating two freeflowing lanes on the southbound side instead of an exit-only lane on the right in an area where there also is an entrance lane on the left. Estimated cost: $12 million-$14 million.

• Milling and resurfacing Route 19 from McMurray Road in Upper St. Clair to Connor Road in Mt. Lebanon. $7.27 million.

• Preparatory work for a three-year project to upgrade three culverts on Route 30 in Forest Hills between Brinton Road and Lennox Avenue. $18 million-$20 million.

• Widening Route 50 over Chartiers Creek in Bridgeville to seven lanes to provide an exclusive lane from southbound Washington Pike to northbound I-79 to ease traffic. Hopefully that will knock out “a lot of the delays in that area now,” Ms. MoonSirianni said. $10.8 million.

In Beaver County, the major project is the final phase of improvements to Freedom Road, a key link between Beaver County and Cranberry in Butler County. This multiyear project, expected to cost $29 million to $31 million, will widen the road and replace culverts between Route 989 and Park Quarry Road.

The major project in Lawrence County will be deck replacement on the Beaver Dam Road Bridge over Honey Creek in Little Beaver at a cost of $1 million to $2 million.