PennDOT, Riverlife panel to seek plan for Route 28
By Joe Grata,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
“Alternative 13” could prove a lucky number for resolving controversy over a two-mile stretch of Route 28 between the North Side and Millvale.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will organize a special task force in cooperation with the Riverlife Task Force to resolve differences and develop a consensus for how the narrow, congested and outdated four-lane road will someday be reconstructed.
The Riverlife Task Force and other entities have objected to 12 previous designs, including the latest one PennDOT calls a “hybrid” because it was thought to have addressed issues and concerns expressed in public meetings last summer.
The public-private collaboration will include as many as two dozen other interested parties, including the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Washington’s Landing Homeowners Association, Mount Troy Citizens Council, Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese and the city planning department.
Stakeholders in the long-standing project are to hold their first workshop within a month and then meet biweekly thereafter. The goal is to reach agreement on a preliminary design by the end of the year, when a public hearing will be held.
PennDOT officials said they want to keep the up-to-$180 million project on track for a fall 2008 groundbreaking. Construction could take four years and inconvenience more than 60,000 cars and trucks a day.
The strategy to resolve differences about the highway design, including whether to save historic St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church, was disclosed yesterday during the third and last open house held by PennDOT to review its three latest proposals.
“[Reaching consensus] will enable us to build the best and safest highway we can while being as sensitive as possible to the environment,” said Earl Neiderhiser, acting PennDOT District 11 executive. “I believe we can do it.”
PennDOT has spent about 10 years and $10 million on engineering and other facets included in an environmental impact statement that federal agencies must approve before land acquisition and final design can start.
Besides saving St. Nicholas Church, Troy Hill homes and Rialto Street, differences have ranged from geometrics at the 31st Street and 40th Street bridges to building six miles of retaining walls — up to 65 feet high — by digging deep into the hillside over much of the two-mile stretch.
PennDOT’s hybrid alternative, although it is the 12th plan presented over the years, is called Alternative 6M, with the “M” designating a modification that would make Route 28 an urban boulevard for the East Ohio Street portion past St. Nicholas and a faster, safer expressway over the remaining 1.5 miles to Millvale.
The Riverlife Task Force has been the main opponent of the high-speed section, objecting mostly to the number, length and height of retaining walls that would scar the hillside above the narrow shelf of land where Route 28 is to be reconstructed.
The 5-year-old organization formed by civic leaders to enhance the city’s waterfronts wants lower walls and bifurcated walls to preserve a “green look” through the river corridor and landscaped plazas at bridge interchanges serving local traffic. It wants urban design features to be incorporated in the project, noting that Route 28 is a major gateway to Pittsburgh.
Ed Patton of Vollmer Associates, the specialized highway design firm engaged by the Riverlife Task Force, said he was optimistic the task force could succeed in creating an environmentally friendly project.
So was Todd Kravits, design location engineer for PennDOT. “We can work together,” he said.
PennDOT officials said they want to keep the up-to-$180 million project on track for a fall 2008 groundbreaking. Construction could take four years and inconvenience more than 60,000 cars and trucks a day.
(Joe Grata can be reached at jgrata@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1985.)