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Analysis: Some ask where tax for roads has gone Neighbor counties seem better served Sunday, August 15, 1999 By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Since state gasoline taxes, motor vehicle registrations and other fees were increased by record amounts in May 1997, are Western Pennsylvania motorists getting the extra highway and bridge work they're paying for?
"We were told we would see a lot more road work," said Dave George of Whitehall, who travels some lumpy, outdated stretches of Route 51 daily to his Pittsburgh job. "I don't see it."
Although Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials say they will spend more than $1.3 billion statewide for construction and renovation work this year, and about another $1 billion on highway maintenance, statistics appear to support George's observation about this corner of the state.
Less populous regions are getting more state-sponsored construction money than Western Pennsylvania. And some transportation experts think that PennDOT needs to explain why it isn't spending all the money that has been allocated for this region.
Lew Villotti, transportation programming manager for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, the planning agency for this region, said, "The question is whether projects on the state's four-year transportation plan are getting built."
Here are some of the figures that are leading to the questions:
Contractors are resurfacing 47.5 miles of state-owned roads in Washington County and 34 miles in Westmoreland County. The PennDOT maintenance crews in those two counties also do resurfacing. Penn-DOT maintenance crews in Allegheny do not have an asphalt paving machine.
With the exception of the Airport Expressway (Route 60) built in the early 1990s, the only all-new roads in Western Pennsylvania are toll roads being built by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.
In addition, about $185 million that has been allocated for the eight counties covered by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission in the current four-year Transportation Improvement Program has not been spent.
Some of the projects have slipped behind schedule, such as a $12 million reconstruction of Fort Pitt Boulevard that was to have started three years ago. The commission is trying to determine what happened to the unspent money.
PennDOT chief spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said that while construction programs had peaks and valleys, PennDOT did all it could to keep funding allocations in the regions for which they're intended. "If we use it in another region, that's tantamount to issuing an IOU," he said. "If you're comparing contract lettings, you have to be cautious. A four-year plan is a dynamic document that's constantly changing."
PennDOT District 11 Engineer Ray Hack said Allegheny County was not being shortchanged.
"We do roll projects over for various reasons" to future years, he said, "but we always have more projects than we have money to spend on them."
PennDOT is planning to hold a meeting in Harrisburg with planning officials and engineering district personnel to lay out plans for the new round of the Transportation Improvement Program. The agenda includes information that Villotti and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission hope to obtain for the first time to better track PennDOT jobs.
"This report is going to put the finger on [PennDOT and other engineering] people who have not been pushing projects and taking advantage of money available to them," Villotti said.
Federal highway aid to PennDOT has increased by about $200 million a year, while 1997's 3.5-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax increase and 50 percent increase in motor vehicle registration fees are providing PennDOT with about $350 million extra a year.
While PennDOT has produced some high profile and expensive projects, such as resurfacing the Parkway East and West and continuing Fort Pitt Bridge-related repairs, neither spending nor mileage reports suggest it is breaking any records.
Ron Geist, managing director of the industry-supported Pennsylvania Highway Information Association, suggested local legislators look into the situation. "Maybe they should be a bit more vocal about this," he said.
State Sen. Jack Wagner, D-Beechview, said he'd do so, "because we desperately need transportation dollars to come to Western Pennsylvania."
He said if the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission saw problems with "fair-share funding" or PennDOT failing to make use of money allocated out of the statewide transportation funding pool, it should alert lawmakers.
"Then it becomes our responsibility to check and double-check," Wagner said.
Joe Grata covers transportation issues for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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?????PennDOT will award $84.7 million in federally aided road and bridge construction contracts this year in District 11, which covers Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties. The amount will rank District 11 eighth among the 11 Penn-DOT districts -- $53.7 million less than last year and $23 million less than 1997.