Column: Building the expressway — 1.3 miles every year
By JOE GRATA
President Trump persists in wanting to construct a 200-mile-long extension to the existing 700-mile Southern Border Wall with Mexico at an estimated cost of $5.7 billion.
If his “crisis” proposal moves forward, pray that the federal bureaucracy acts swifter than PennDOT and subsequently the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, the state agencies charged with building the Mon-Fayette Expressway and related Southern Beltway.
Ground was broken for the first segment of the MFX near Brownsville in February 1973. I attended the ceremony. Forty-six years later, a total of 60 miles of the toll-road expansion projects are completed and open to traffic.
Mathematically, it works out to building 1.3 miles a year. Seen another way, that’s less than half the passing distance recorded by Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger this season.
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