Oct 6, 2018 3 min read

Ever envision a water taxi skimming along the Monongahela River from Charleroi to Homestead’s Waterfront? Foresee a bike path from Claysville to the Enlow Fork Natural Area? Imagine a high-speed rail line from Pittsburgh to Southpointe?

Sound like pie-in-the-sky ideas that would cost billions?

Even the most mundane bridge-repair project has to start with a germ of an idea, and ideas are what the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission is seeking in a series of meetings on the broad topic of transportation in 10 counties that begin Tuesday at Courthouse Square in Washington.

The commission calls the informal gathering, scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m., a “public participation panel.”

State Department of Transportation and county officials will be part of process, but the SPC wants to hear from citizens, too.

Abby Stark, who grew up in Fayette County and commuted for a time via Mid-Mon Valley Transit Authority bus to her job in Pittsburgh, is a public involvement specialist for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, a regional planning organization.

The commission is seeking input from the public on what type of transportation they’d like to see in Washington County or the region, discuss plans it will be working on during the next couple of years, and consider where money to pay for the projects might originate.

“We can prioritize different things,” Stark said.

The topic of transportation also includes transit, which is often a local endeavor but sometimes crosses county lines.

“Regional transit has come up a lot,” Stark said. “With regional transit, we’re currently in our long-range planning process to take us 25 years into the future.”

“I took MMVTA every day to Pittsburgh when I lived in Mon City,” Stark said. “When I lived there, a lot of people who used it wanted it to go to Washington.

“The question was, however, ‘Is there enough demand for those services?’ Demand has to be there consistently.”

The date and time of a similar forum in Allegheny County has not yet been determined, but additional venues are Wednesday at the Westmoreland County Courthouse commissioners’ meeting room, 2 N. Main St., Greensburg; and Oct. 18 at the Fayette County Public Service Building, 22 E. Main St., Uniontown. Each is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m.

The public participation meeting for Greene County will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 30, in the second-floor meeting room of the Greene County Office Building, Waynesburg.

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission has begun to look at updating the area’s long-range transportation plan, said Jeremy Kelly, Greene County planner. The plan takes into account current as well as expected future needs.

“It basically looks at the future, at the county’s long-range plans in regard to transportation, which can include waterways, bike trails, roads, intersections, rail transportation even,” he said.

The plan also takes into account transportation in relation to economic development, considering, for instance, where improvements might be needed for areas of existing or proposed development or housing, Kelly said.

In regard to local road projects, Greene County recently prioritized county bridges and improvements to the intersections on Route 88 at Fieldson Crossroads and Mapletown Crossroads, and on Route 19-221 at the Ruff Creek intersection.