Public hearings will be held this week on two of the more controversial bridges on the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s review for possible tolling. They are 25 miles apart on Interstate 80 in Jefferson and Clarion counties.
The hearings, which will review PennDOT’s environmental assessment of the projects, are the next step in the state’s federally required evaluation before tolls can be collected. The department wants to turn nine bridges over to a private company — including the Interstate 79 bridge near Bridgeville — for replacement using money from tolls of $1 to $2.
The environmental assessment is to determine whether a project is causing so much environmental disruption that the state should develop a full environmental impact statement. Such a statement would identify any remedial steps that should be taken to reduce environmental concerns.
The bridges involved are the North Fork bridges in Jefferson County and the Canoe Creek bridges 25 miles west in Clarion County. They are pairs of deteriorating bridges in each direction that PennDOT says it can’t afford to replace without adding tolls, but local officials are fighting the proposal there and elsewhere in the state where tolling is proposed.
U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Bellefonte. whose district includes the I-80 bridges, called PennDOT’s proposal a “wrong-minded way” to address the problem. Between a $5.6 billion surplus last year plus billions in federal infrastructure funds that the Biden administration pushed through Congress, the state should have plenty of money to address the bridges, he said.
“I think they’re either lying or incompetent if they say they don’t have the money,” Mr. Thompson said. “These bridges need to addressed, no doubt about it. I think the dollars are clearly there.”
High-cost replacements
Replacing these bridges won’t be an easy or inexpensive task.
In Jefferson, the project would include not only replacing the North Fork bridges but realigning the eastbound side, which now is about 1,100 feet away from the west side. The eastbound side, opened in 1962, includes a sharp bend that engineers say wasn’t designed to handle today’s 70 mph speed limit and is among the leading accident sites in the state.
The bridges carry about 31,900 vehicles a day above North Fork Redbank Creek, Water Plant Road and Walter Dick Memorial Park in Brookville and Pine Creek.
The east side also is rated in poor condition and must be inspected every six months while the west side is rated fair and has yearly inspections.
Additionally, the work would include replacing I-80 bridges over Jenks Street and Richardsville Road as well as the extension of the North Fork Park culvert.
Overall, the project is to start in 2024, take three to four years to complete and cost from $160 million to $195 million.
In Clarion, the project to replace the Canoe Creek bridges also would include other work over a three-mile area from the Knox interchange east to weigh stations at the 56.5 mile marker. The bridges, which carry the interstate over Tippecanoe Road and Canoe Creek, are projected to carry just over 30,000 vehicles a day by 2025.
The bridges were built in 1966 and have had what PennDOT calls “multiple retrofits” since 2013 to address fatigue-induced cracking. The westbound side is rated in poor condition, the eastbound side is rated fair.
This project, which also would replace a reinforced concrete arch culvert that carries an unnamed tributary to Canoe Creek beneath the highway, is estimated to cost $110 million to $135 million. It is expected to follow the same construction schedule, three to four years beginning in 2024.
The plan is to charge tolls for traffic going eastbound on Canoe Creek and westbound on North Fork. Traffic would be maintained during the work.
Widespread opposition
Not surprisingly, there’s one common theme around the idea of bridge tolling: Strong opposition from elected officials and the public in the communities near the bridges proposed for tolling.
The critiques are pretty much the same, too. Locals who have to use the bridges say they already pay state income and gas taxes that should pay for the bridges; outsiders who want to avoid the tolls will crowd and damage local roads; and billions in state surpluses and federal stimulus funds for infrastructure should be enough to pay for replacing the bridges.
Lawsuits have been filed by municipalities in the Harrisburg and Bridgeville areas challenging whether the state followed proper procedures in the federal process of submitting bridges for tolling approval.
Mr. Thompson said he fears PennDOT has misevaluated the impact that tolls would have on businesses, both locally and out-of-state. The state’s figures show trucks make up about 44% of the traffic in the North Fork area and about 50% around Canoe Creek, but Mr. Thompson said many of those are from local businesses that would be hurt significantly by even small tolls.
“We do not want to have less commerce coming into Pennsylvania,” he said. “We want companies to manufacture and move products in and out of Pennsylvania and this isn’t the way to do that.”
State Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre County and a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor, held a news conference in Bridgeville on Friday at a lectern with a placard reading, “Don’t toll our bridges.” More than 15,000 people have signed petitions against tolling in that area.
Mr. Corman criticized outgoing Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf for beginning the tolling process independently instead of working with the GOP-controlled Legislature to develop a funding solution.
“Clearly, bridges are a major priority,” he said. “Tolling doesn’t solve the problem.”
In Harrisburg last week, attorneys for Cumberland County and seven municipalities there argued before Commonwealth Court for an injunction to stop tolling to fund a proposed $600 million project to replace a bridge on Interstate 83. They say municipalities should have been involved in the process years ago so they could prepare local roads to handle traffic trying to avoid tolls.
PennDOT lawyers stressed the process is still in the planning stage and actual work won’t start for several years.
In the Pittsburgh region, the Bridgeville project is expected to have its first public meetings in July or August, followed by its first formal hearing two months later.
PennDOT is pushing the tolling concept because it says it doesn’t have more than $2 billion it would need to replace the large, economically important bridges on the tolling list. The department maintains it only spends $6.9 billion of the $15 billion it should spend every year on roads and bridges, an $8.1 billion annual gap not nearly covered by state surpluses or federal stimulus money.
At a recent media briefing on the I-80 work, Brian Shunk of PennDOT’s office of alternative funding said the department sees no reason not to keep moving forward with tolling.
“I think we are comfortable with our process,” he said.
PennDOT has scheduled a hearing on the environmental assessments for the North Fork bridges in Jefferson from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Chateau d’Argy, 345 Main St., Brookville. The Canoe Creek environmental hearing will be from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Wolf’s Den Banquet & Conference Facility, 291 Timberwolf Run in Knox.
The department also will take written comments through May 18 on the Jefferson bridges and through May 19 for Clarion.
Ed Blazina: eblazina@post-gazette.cm, 412-263-1470 or on Twitter @EdBlazina.
First Published: May 1, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: May 2, 2022, 12:12 p.m.
