Don't plan on using the 24-mile northern stretch of the Mon-Fayette Expressway anytime soon to zip into Pittsburgh from points south or as a tolled alternative to the congested Parkway East and Squirrel Hill Tunnels.

Even under a best-case scenario, construction will not start before 2010 on the segment north of Route 51 that is to split into a Y to Monroeville and the city. If construction begins, it then would be staged and take as many as six more years to complete.

That pessimistic outlook was presented by Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission officials and consultants at a three-hour meeting of the Mon-Fayette Expressway-Southern Beltway Executive Committee today at the Meadowlands Holiday Inn in Washington County.

There's more. The executive committee also said the price tag is now estimated to be $3.6 billion, up from $2.7 billion, when future inflation is included, and no source of construction funding has been identified.

Nevertheless, design work is continuing and is now about 30 percent finished. Turnpike spokesman Phil Ouelet said about $91 million has been spent on design, studies and preliminary work over the past 15 years.

About $200 million is left in the budget, enough to finish design but not to acquire all of the 1,300 properties to clear the right-of-way.

David Zazworsky, special consultant to the turnpike for the expansion project, discussed the latest hurdles facing completion of the second largest new-highway-construction project in the United States.

"It hit home when I (recently) read about the population losses in Allegheny County," he said. "What would help reverse that loss more than any other thing would be completing this project," the northern link in the 70-mile highway now about half built in the Monongahela River corridor south to the West Virginia border.

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.