Bridges are boon for Montour Trail, but barriers to completion remain
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The Montour Trail has scheduled ceremonies to celebrate progress in closing three gaps along its 46-mile route, but it may take years to fill one of its most conspicuous missing links.
The J.R. Taylor Memorial Bridge over Clifton Road in Bethel Park will be dedicated at noon Sunday, and groundbreakings are set in October for bridges over Morganza and Georgetown roads in Cecil.
But plans to build a bridge at the Routes 50-980 intersection farther west on the trail in Cecil must wait until the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation moves ahead with a project to realign the intersection.
Ned Williams, president of the Montour Trail Council, told the Pennsylvania State Transportation Commission at a hearing last week that the council is eager to move ahead with the bridge so bicyclists and other trail users don't have to cross traffic.
"It's an ugly intersection. There's a lot of near-misses there and a lot of crashes there," he told the commission, which is considering updates to the state's long-range transportation plan.
The problem has only gotten worse with truck traffic from Washington County's booming gas drilling industry, Mr. Williams said.
He said the trail council is prepared to pay for and erect the bridge in tandem with the PennDOT project, which would realign Route 980 so it forms a conventional intersection with Route 50.
Valerie Petersen, spokeswoman for PennDOT District 12, said the department is preparing to advertise for a design consultant. "It looks like three to four years until it comes into the construction phase," she said Monday.
The region's four-year Transportation Improvement Program shows construction scheduled to begin in 2014 but identifies only $2.3 million toward the $3.6 million estimated cost of the intersection project.
First Published August 30, 2011 12:00 am
