SPC’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Team is implementing a comprehensive “bicycle level of comfort”, analysis on our region’s road network. This level of comfort, or LOC analysis aids cyclists in finding comfortable and enjoyable routes as we continue promoting bike travel in the region.
View the video to learn more and view the current Level of Comfort map here.
The Southwestern Pennsylvania Corporation, a 501(c)(3) corporation, on behalf of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC), is requesting Technical Proposals and Price Proposals (together, the Proposal package) for the preparation of a Brodhead Road Corridor Planning Study in Beaver County. The selected firm or team of firms will assist SPC with completing a study with recommendations that will improve safety and mobility for all travel modes along the corridor.
Electronic submissions will be required via SPC’s SharePoint Site; full submission details are provided in the RFP document.
The grant is a U.S. Department of Transportation Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) transportation grant. It covers the second phase of the $63 million Route 228 corridor project.
This portion of the project stretches from Route 3020 Haine School Road to the Beaver County line. Gateway 228 also includes the realignment of Balls Bend in Middlesex Township.
The improvements to the stretch of road will allow for better traffic capacity, safety and accessibility.
“Strategically, it’s a great project,” Gordon said.
Gordon said about $17 million has been raised locally for Gateway 228, an amount he referred to as “unheard of” at a local level.
Leslie Osche, chairwoman of the Butler County board of commissioners, said securing the BUILD grant was a collaborative effort.
It required pre-application legwork on the part of Cranberry, Adams and Middlesex townships, input from county and state officials, and even a willingness for county residents to pay a $5 local use fee.
“(That was) money on the table,” Osche said. “I am so very proud of this county.”
Teamwork was what allowed the county to submit its BUILD grant application in June and receive notice of winning the grant Thursday. The turnaround wouldn’t have been possible without the planning work the townships did beforehand, according to Osche.
“This is such a wonderful example of local planning,” said Vincent Valdes, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. “This is a fantastic project.”
Valdes, a planner and engineer who used to work for the Federal Transit Administration, said one of the things that stands out about the Route 228 corridor project is the “clear framework” local officials and leaders have established.
Read the full article at ButlerEagle.com
The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission has awarded nearly $9 million in grants that will serve as the final piece of funding for 16 transportation projects worth more than $110 million across the 10-county region.
Some of the money is for planning or feasibility studies, but the bulk of it will allow projects to begin construction, the commission said.
The grants were awarded in two categories: $5.8 million for 10 projects under the Livability through Smart Transportation Program, and $3.186 million for six projects through the Transportation Alternatives Program. The Livability program is designed to link transportation projects with other development work while the Alternatives program encourages bike and pedestrian lanes, trail expansion, and access to public transit.
The most expensive project is 12 miles of improvements to Route 981 in Westmoreland County at a cost of $51 million, including a $750,000 Livability grant. Known as the Laurel Valley Transportation Improvement Project, it will upgrade Route 981 from Route 819 in Mount Pleasant Township to Route 30 in Unity.
The first section of work will be from the Route 819 interchange to Norvelt. The grant will be used to widen shoulders to allow bike and pedestrian travel and improve connections with the regional trail system.
In Beaver County, a $14.5 million Pennsylvania Department of Transportation project on Brodhead Road in Aliquippa will rehabilitate the surface and shoulders, install a new traffic signal at the intersection with Center Grange Road, and consider a left-turn lane between Pleasant Drive and the Northern Limit. The project received a $750,000 Livability grant.
A $492,000 Alternatives grant will help PennDOT complete a $12.6 million project to revamp the Jefferson Avenue interchange with Interstate 70 in Washington. The project will include new signals, sidewalk restoration and improving stormwater improvements.
Read the full story on Post-Gazette.com
For more than 20 years with the Federal Transit Administration, Vincent Valdes worked with local communities across the country, overseeing their transportation projects from afar but only getting what he called “visceral satisfaction.”
Now, as the new executive director of the 10-county Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, Mr. Valdes said he looks forward to seizing the opportunity “to come here and bake the cake myself.”
“I wanted to be able to see the fruits of my work,” Mr. Valdes, 61, said in an interview Friday. “Why not actually come out and do it myself?”
Mr. Valdes was selected in April as the replacement for Jim Hassinger and began his new job on June 15. Mr. Hassinger retired after 19 years as executive director.
A native of the Bronx, a borough of New York City, Mr. Valdes has a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Boston University and worked in private industry in California before getting a master’s in urban planning at Columbia University. He wrote his thesis on the development of intelligent transportation systems.
That led to working as an urban planner for Washington before joining the U.S. Department of Transportation and rising to the Federal Transit Administration’s associate administrator in the Office of Research, Demonstration and Innovation in 2008. Mr. Valdes said the strong foundation community and universities helped to draw him here.
Mr. Valdes and his wife, Lynne, left their four children, ages 21 to 29, in the Washington area to move to Fox Chapel with their two mastiffs. He’s a thin, balding man with a sharp mustache who shows an obvious enthusiasm for dealing with transportation challenges.
Much like Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, Mr. Valdes often speaks with catch phrases, referring to innovation as “the art of the possible” and offering Serving People through Collaboration as a variation of the SPC acronym.
In Pittsburgh, Mr. Valdes takes over a federally mandated agency that is required to review and prioritize transportation projects in Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington and Westmoreland counties and the City of Pittsburgh. The region includes 548 municipalities that range from urban centers such as Pittsburgh to bedroom communities like Cranberry and rural areas like much of Armstrong and Greene counties.
“That is difficult, but that’s the way it is,” he said. “I realize that’s one of the biggest challenges. I need to get out there and meet as many people as I can.”
Read the full article at Post-Gazette.com
Most of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been negative: high unemployment, business closures, transportation agencies reeling from revenue losses due to low traffic.
But a seven-page study released Thursday claims there’s one area where Americans have benefited dramatically: Working from home instead of driving to work has saved more than $90 billion in time and actual costs since the pandemic began in March.
Upwork — a Mountain View, Calif., agency that specializes in matching freelance professionals with temporary jobs — concluded that working remotely has become so popular during the pandemic that many people won’t return to driving and the national economy will go through a major shift in the next couple of years. Adam Ozimek, the agency’s chief economist, said he expects Americans to spend the money saved on commuting in other areas such as eating out more often, home improvements or more lavish vacations.
In a survey of 1,000 people, Mr. Ozimek said he found people now working from home previously commuted 46.3 minutes a day to get to work and back. Extrapolated across the country, that translates to Americans spending about 32.9 million hours less each day commuting and eliminating the pollution that comes from 890 million miles driven each day.
Using the standard average cost of 20.54 cents per mile for operating a car, Americans are saving $183 million a day in commuting costs. In time, valued at $12.50 an hour, the savings amounts to $411 million a day.
Since the start of the pandemic in mid-March, that amounts to just over $90.9 billion or an average of about $2,000 for each person who previously drove to work…
Read the full article at Post-Gazette.com
The coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt life in the region; overall, residents of Allegheny County are still traveling less compared to 2019. However, bike miles have gone up.
“We pretty much had our best May ever,” said David White, executive director of Healthy Ride, Pittsburgh’s bikeshare system.
The nonprofit’s ridership increased 43 percent from 2019 to 2020. Much of the growth stemmed from Healthy Ride’s partnership with Port Authority: anyone with a Connect Card can take unlimited 15-minute trips. However, beginning May 1 of this year, average trip length increased by 60 percent.
“Instead of linking the last mile or first mile of their transit trip with bikeshare, people are just taking the whole trip on a bike now,” said White.
National, county, and city data reflect an increased appetite for bikes. According to analytics company Streetlight Data, bike miles in the Pittsburgh region saw up to a 19 percent increase in May 2020. The region’s trails recorded jumps of more than 30 percent on some segments, according to data collected by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. Year over year, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership recorded a daily average increase of nearly 50 percent at its counting sites during the months of March, April and May.
Read the full article at WESA.fm
After more than eight months of research, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission wants to hear from residents in the 10-county region about where they want to go and how public transit could help them get there.
The agency is conducting an online survey through September as part of a study that will recommend a series of intermodal hubs or corridors to help transit agencies work together better. Dave Totten, a transportation planner for the commission, said it wants to hear from residents regardless of whether they currently use public transit.
“We want to hear from everyone about where they want to go so we can look at how we can get them there,” Mr. Totten said. “What we’re trying to focus on is where all these [transit systems] can connect. All 10 counties have possibilities.”
The ultimate goal would be for a commuter in an outlying county to pay one fare and follow one schedule to travel to Pittsburgh or some other central location even if they have to transfer several times to reach their destination.
“We want to hear from everyone about where they want to go so we can look at how we can get them there,” Mr. Totten said. “What we’re trying to focus on is where all these [transit systems] can connect. All 10 counties have possibilities.”
Read the full article at post-gazette.com
Distribution of a Public Survey Tool to Inform a Vision for Multimodal Transportation in Southwestern Pennsylvania
The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC) has launched an online survey to collect opinions about public transit in the region. This survey is part of the project SmartMoves Connections: A Regional Vision for Public Transit, which is planning for future Multimodal Hubs and Multimodal Corridors.
The survey is primarily map-based and includes a process that will guide the survey taker through a series of questions that correspond with choices and locations shown on the map. SPC worked with the Pittsburgh-based firm, CivicMapper, to create the brief survey, which includes questions about mobility choices and priorities.
The survey will be open through September, 2020. The results will be incorporated into the SmartMoves Connections study where it will help project planners to identify and prioritize multimodal projects and policies to improve connections within and across the counties.
Through a multiple-stop tour Friday, Butler County officials welcomed Vincent Valdes, the new executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.
According to a county news release Friday, Butler County officials, including the county commissioners, ushered Valdes and U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-16th, through stops including construction work improving the Route 228 corridor and the UPMC Sports Complex, the Pittsburgh Penguins practice site, in Cranberry Township.
“We’re in such an expansion mode,” said Kelly about the growth of the county.
Mark Gordon, Butler County chief of economic development and planning, said the tour was to welcome Valdes to the region and showcase the county’s economic development.
“We wanted to show the diversity of the county,” Gordon said.
The tour began with a presentation in the Cranberry Township municipal building.
“I think it’s remarkable what I’ve seen here,” Valdes said. “I’m taken by the vision.”
The commission secures funding for projects such as the Gateway 228 Project. Valdes stressed the importance of local governments to execute the planning, which includes providing matching funding needed to move projects forward. He praised the work done by the county and municipalities.
“I can see a fruitful partnership with the SPC,” Valdes said.
Read the full article at the Butler Eagle