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Eich on
Transportation Build the
Missing Links There are
four missing links in Centre County which need to be completed: • I-99
from Bald Eagle to Grays Woods. What a mess. Half the acid rock
problem will be cleaned up by the current $50 million project and half will
remain buried under an already completed section of I-99. Hold your breath
Centre County and hope everything works out. Since PennDOT and DEP have
said they are not going remove the fill under the completed section of the
highway, it is time to open pieces of I-99 while the environmental remediation
work is being completed at Skytop. Residents of Port Matilda and the Upper
Bald Eagle Valley have lived with choking traffic congestion, as well as a
deadly mix of high-speed truck traffic and slow moving local traffic, for far
too long. Transportation
Funding During 2006,
a state-wide, bi-partisan Transportation Funding and Reform Commission reported
that roads, bridges and transit systems needed hundreds of millions of dollars
for repairs and replacement. The collected testimony at numerous public
hearings. The public said: fix our transportation system, but get the
money from something we're not paying for. In February, the Governor
proposed leasing the turnpike. The answer was no. No was also the
answer to increasing the gas tax or fees. The only “plan” that got the
support of a majority of legislators in the Republican -controlled PA Senate and
the Democrat-controlled PA House was increasing the tolls on the PA Turnpike and
installing tolls on I-80. Revenues raised will be used to repay bonds to
generate about $950 million a year for improvements to roads, bridges, and
transit systems. The
compromise was complicated, expensive, and mostly negotiated behind closed doors
by leaders under the gun to find a way to fund transportation as part of state
budget deal. Unfortunately, that’s the only way things get done in PA
– with the pressure of the budget deadline. We just saw the State Senate
say it would be too busy this Fall to consider “the Jonas Salk Legacy Fund,
which is intended to raise $500 million to jump start investments in biomedical
research” (PennLive.com, 8/20/07). That economic development proposal
was introduced last year. But without the pressure of a budget deadline,
it just gets ignored. So we got a
transportation deal that makes few people happy, but meets a critical need. What is most
important now is make sure that the people who live and work in Centre County
don't get run over by the deal. That comes from minimizing the number of
toll plazas and from placing each plaza in a location that minimizes the number
of commuters affected. The Centre-Clinton
line is the wrong location for a toll plaza. It would shift commuter
traffic from I-80 to PA 64. That can't be allowed to happen. The
Central PA toll plaza should be shifted east to the portion of I-80 in Union
County. Few commuters use that section of road and there are no easily
accessible, direct routes that would attract through traffic. CATA Transit
agencies did well in the recently approved Transportation Funding deal. As
a result CATA will have the resources to meet some long-known, but unfilled,
needs. Older buses can be replaced, busy routes can be better served, and
service can be extended. One important expansion is to University Park
Airport. Another would provide service to existing and planned Park &
Ride Lots in the Centre Hall, Pleasant Gap, Port Matilda, and Philipsburg areas. County Van
Service Centre County
operates a Shared-Ride van service that provides over 70,000 rides a year,
primarily for Senior Citizens and clients of county agencies. This service
provides critical access to individuals who otherwise would be isolated and
forgotten. This service must be maintained, and expanded in areas where
there sufficient demand and no other service. Metropolitan
Planning Organization The Centre
County MPO is the group that votes on project and spending priorities for
transportation money coming into Centre County ($55 million in base funds plus
varying amounts of “spike funding” for projects of state wide significance).
The MPO currently has 19 voting members. Costs are shared by
municipalities with voting rights and county government. The MPO as
currently organized fairly represents each region of Centre County.
Efforts to reorganize the MPO and force each municipality in Centre County to
pay for it operations are ill conceived. Keep the
existing organizational structure of the MPO – which includes one
representative from each of Centre County’s rural regions: the Lower Bald
Eagle, the Moshannon Valley, the Mountaintop, Penns Valley, Upper Bald Eagle,
and the portion of the Nittany Valley Region not represented individually.
I negotiated the agreement with the MPO that provided for these regions to be
represented and to for the contribution expected from these areas to be paid by
Centre County Government. Eich’s
Transportation Experience • Worked
with Moshannon Valley municipalities to identify and securing funding for roads
and bridges, including the Philipsburg Bypass, the US 322 bridge at Cold Stream,
PA 504 bridges, planning improvements to PA 350, and planning for Corridor O. |