Outgoing Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald will join the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission as its new executive director early next year, officials announced Thursday.

Though he’ll no longer be an elected official, Fitzgerald will continue to promote the region in his next job.

Allegheny County and nine surrounding counties are part of the commission, which plans and prioritizes the use of state and federal transportation funding and establishes economic development priorities for the region. SPC is also a federally certified metropolitan planning organization and local development district.

Fitzgerald, who is term-limited, has served as county executive since 2012 and was a long-time member of county council prior to his election to the county’s top office. He will join SPC in January, after he departs the position.

“While I’ve always had a regional focus, I look forward to putting my skills and relationships to work for all 10 of our counties. Together, we will continue to concentrate on infrastructure, communication, economic development, workforce and quality of life issues for our region,” Fitzgerald said in a statement.

Fitzgerald was a member of SPC’s executive committee during his tenure as county executive.

He’ll oversee a staff of 50 in his new role and spearhead the group’s work improving infrastructure, communication, economic development and quality of life issues in the region.

SPC’s current executive director, Vincent Valdes will retire at the end of the year. Fitzgerald will begin his new role on Jan. 2, after his successor, Democrat Sara Innamorato, is sworn in as the next county executive.

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Outgoing Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has been tapped to lead the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, an obscure government cooperative of 10 counties and the City of Pittsburgh that helps funnel state and federal dollars to projects in the region.

The commission announced Mr. Fitzgerald’s hiring on Thursday. A term-limited Democrat who has served 12 years in Allegheny County’s top elected position, he’ll begin his new job in January once he leaves office. After more than two decades as an Allegheny County official — he was previously on County Council — he will lead a commission that helps direct state and federal transportation and economic development funding throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania.

“Thank you to the SPC and its board for this opportunity and thank you to Vince for his work to energize and elevate the organization during his tenure,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a statement, referring to outgoing executive director Vincent Valdes. “While I’ve always had a regional focus, I look forward to putting my skills and relationships to work for all 10 of our counties. Together, we will continue to concentrate on infrastructure, communication, economic development, workforce and quality of life issues for our region.”

Mr. Fitzgerald has already long served on the commission’s executive committee in his capacity as Allegheny County’s leader, including a stint as chairman. The executive committee includes elected officials from around the 10 counties that the commission serves.

He will oversee about 50 employees in his new role, the commission said. He will replace Mr. Valdes, who has served as the commission’s executive director since June 2020. Leslie Osche, chair of the commission and the Butler County Board of Commissioners, said a thorough search process was conducted for Mr. Valdes’ replacement.

“The Board had several objectives when we launched the search process: to attract a candidate that intrinsically understood this region’s unique needs and characteristics, had a track record of leadership and growth cultivation, and would build upon the current strength, talent, and consistency of the SPC staff,” Ms. Osche said in a statement. “We interviewed a diverse group of candidates from the region and beyond. Rich Fitzgerald certainly exceeded the Board’s robust qualifications and competencies.”

Caitlin O’Connor, a commission spokeswoman, said the search process started months ago, not long after Mr. Valdes told the commission’s board in June that he wanted to retire at the end of 2023. Multiple finalists from more than a dozen initial applicants were interviewed in multiple rounds, she said.

View the full article at post-gazette.com.

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission announced Thursday, Nov. 30, that its board of directors has named Rich Fitzgerald as the organization’s new executive director.

Fitzgerald will officially assume this role on Jan. 2, 2024, once his tenure as Allegheny County Executive concludes.

“While I’ve always had a regional focus, I look forward to putting my skills and relationships to work for all 10 of our counties,” Fitzgerald said. “Together, we will continue to concentrate on infrastructure, communication, economic development, workforce and quality of life issues for our region.”

As executive director, Fitzgerald will lead a team of 50 staff members in the organization’s seven departments, including economic and workforce development; transportation planning; strategic initiatives and policy; information and data; finance; human resources; and communications and public relations.

View the full story at butlereagle.com.

On Monday, several lawmakers announced that Allegheny County is getting a federal grant to make streets safer.

Rep. Summer Lee, Rep. Chris Deluzio, Senator Bob Casey and Senator John Fetterman together announced the $520,000 in funding allocated from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All grant. The funds go to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

“The infrastructure law is making our roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike,” Senator Casey said. “I was proud to advocate for funding to help the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission identify Allegheny County’s most dangerous roads in order to make them safer and save lives.”

The funds will be used by the SPC to develop a Vision Zero Safety Action Plan, which identifies areas of critical need.

“By developing a comprehensive Vision Zero Safety Action Plan, we are taking a huge step towards identifying and rectifying the most hazardous areas in our community. This initiative not only promises a safer today but also lays the groundwork for expanding these vital safety measures across Southwestern Pennsylvania, ensuring a more secure tomorrow for all our residents,” Rep. Lee said.

View the full article at wpxi.com

State and county leaders on Thursday announced $132 million in funds to repair three major bridges in the Pittsburgh region: Fort Duquesne, West End, and McKees Rocks.

The three steel structures span either the Allegheny or Ohio rivers, and have a combined age of nearly 240 years.

The new funds were announced in a press conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Among those in attendance were Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll, and former Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald in his new role as executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

Mr. Carroll told reporters after the press conference that the $132 million from PennDOT would help supplement other federal and state funds already allocated to completing all three bridge repair projects. Of the funds, $25 million would be used for McKees Rocks, $60 million for Fort Duquesne and $47 million for the West End Bridge, he said.

The money would help fully fund the estimated total costs of all three projects, he said, with $90 million in total for McKees Rocks, $162 million for Fort Duquesne and $120 million for West End. Mr. Carroll did not provide an exact timeline for each project, other than saying it would take years for all three to be completed.

Rehab work planned on the bridges includes deck reconstruction, bearing replacement, and other critical needs Mr. Carroll said.

He said the Fort Duquesne Bridge work is the most substantial because it involves 19 total structures, counting both decks of the bridge and all the ramps that lead onto it from the North Shore and Downtown.

“It really is more than just a cosmetic cleaning of the bridge. It’s much more substantial that that,” Mr. Carroll said.

Jason Zang, district executive for PennDOT District 11 — which covers Allegheny, Beaver, and Lawrence counties — told reporters that the easiest project to complete would likely be the McKees Rocks Bridge, due to the least complicated scope of work.

Officials said the funding announced Thursday is critically important to valuable infrastructure that connects people to jobs, school, social activities, and just getting people where they need to be throughout the region. Mr. Fitzgerald said that while the bridges are in decent shape, not taking any action would lead to weight limiting and other restrictions in future years that would hurt the economy.

The condition of bridges has been center-stage in recent years, since the Fern Hollow Bridge in the East End suddenly collapsed roughly two years ago. Since then, that bridge has been rebuilt, and a rehabilitation project of the Charles Anderson Memorial Bridge in Oakland is slated to start this spring. The Roberto Clemente Bridge reopened on New Year’s Eve in 2023, after rehabilitation work began in February 2022.

According to state officials, the McKees Rocks Bridge’s last major rehabilitation project was in 1985, with minor repair projects in 2010 and 2022. Fort Duquesne was last rehabbed in 2009, and West End saw a major repair project in 1991.

Of the three bridges, McKees Rocks is the oldest, opening in 1931. It connects McKees Rocks to Pittsburgh’s Brighton Heights neighborhood, and is the longest bridge in Allegheny County. Including the longest elevated ramp, it is nearly 7,300 feet long.

Pittsburgh engineer George Richardson modeled the bridge on New York’s Hell Gate Bridge, according to a Post-Gazette report on the history of the region’s bridges. Its engineer, Gustav Lindenthal, also did Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street Bridge.

The West End Bridge, connecting the city’s West End and North Side, first served motorists and pedestrians in 1932. It was the longest tiered-arch bridge in the country when it was completed, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Pittsburgh voters approved a $43.7 million bond issue in 1928 that helped pay for multiple infrastructure projects, including the West End and McKees Rocks bridges. E.V. Babcock, a former Pittsburgh mayor and Allegheny County commissioner, said after the result that the voters’ decision “puts Allegheny County into a position to keep up the race for supremacy among the great centers of population in the United States,” The Pittsburgh Press reported.

Of the three structures, Fort Duquesne is the newest, opening in 1969. The double-decker span connects from Point State Park to the city’s North Shore and other North Side neighborhoods, and is roughly 430 feet long, not including the length of the ramps that approach it from either side.

The main span was completed in 1963, but there were significant delays in acquiring the right-of-way for the approach ramps on the northern side — locals dubbed it “The Bridge to Nowhere” and The Pittsburgh Press reported that it was known then as “America’s most expensive fishing pier.”

It replaced the Manchester Bridge, which was demolished in 1970.

Darrin Kelly, president of the Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council, said it’s important to remember the human aspect of the bridge repair projects — over 150,000 people cross all three spans every day. And a few thousand people in the trades will help repair them, he said.

“We are the City of Bridges, but our bridges are our gateway,” Mr. Kelly said. “They’re our identity as a region.”

View the full article at post-gazette.com.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is directing $132 million to help repair three key local bridges, officials announced Thursday. But don’t expect the resulting work to disrupt your commute any time soon.

The money is a mix of state and federal funds, including funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It’s meant to help offset the impact of high-cost projects.

“These projects are costly, but they’re important for the entire region here in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, and we can’t put off these upgrades for too much longer,” said Lt. Gov. Austin Davis at a Thursday-morning press conference.

Nearly half the money, $60 million, will be added to state and federal dollars already allocated to renovations of the Fort Duquesne Bridge. In total, it will cost an estimated $162 million to repair the main span of the bridge, as well as the ramps feeding into it.

The West End Bridge will get $47 million, which will help cover the $120 million projected total cost. Other state and federal money will cover the rest of the cost.

PennDOT is also committing $25 million to the repair of the McKees Rocks Bridge; upgrades that are expected to require $90 million to complete.

“The West End and McKees Rocks bridges are nearly 100 years old,” Davis noted. “We want them to be here for another 100 years.”

Together, the bridges carry more than 310,000 people across the rivers each day.

Design and construction on the projects can move more quickly now that they’ve received additional funds, added PennDOT secretary Mike Carroll. Plus, money that would have gone towards repairing the three bridges can now be spent elsewhere in the region.

“So it’s really good news for Allegheny County, and it’s equally good news for the counties that constitute the southwest region,” Caroll said.

But don’t expect the construction to impact your commute anytime soon. Caroll warned that the projects still need to be designed, so the timeline “will be measured in years.”

“But the good news is, that would be far fewer years than it would have been without the money,” he added. “Compiling the money necessary to deliver these major projects and do all the other things that PennDOT has to do is a real challenge.”

View the full article at wesa.fm.

Millions of dollars in federal funds will go to help repair and upgrade three major Pittsburgh bridges, federal and state officials announced Thursday.

A total of $132 million will help repair steel components, joints and bearings on the McKees Rocks, West End and Fort Duquesne bridges, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, said. The work will enhance the spans’ structural integrity and longevity, and provide better driving conditions for motorists.

“The infrastructure law is making Pittsburgh’s many bridges safer for the thousands of residents, commuters and travelers who rely on them every day,” Casey said. “When we improve the condition of our bridges, we strengthen the region’s economy and make the City of Bridges easier to navigate.”

State lawmakers also lauded the new funding.

“Pittsburgh is the City of Bridges — they knit together our neighborhoods, as local residents go to and from school, work, shopping and civic events,” Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said Thursday during a press event in Pittsburgh. “More infrastructure spending equals more jobs — good-paying, family-sustaining jobs. We’re proud to stand with our union brothers and sisters, who are working hard to rebuild Pennsylvania.”

“My administration has a GSD attitude — we’re getting stuff done for the people of Pennsylvania,” Gov. Josh Shapiro added.

Structural issues with dozens of bridges led Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey to commission a report in 2022 calling for increased focus on the problem. Gainey unveiled his plans for a new Comprehensive Bridge Asset Management Program in the wake of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse in the city’s Frick Park in January 2022.

Since President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law in November 2021, officials have allocated $13.8 billion for more than 300 projects in Pennsylvania, including more than $8 billion for roads and bridges, and more than $1 billion for high-speed internet.

The law, which Casey voted to support in 2021, directly funds work on the McKees Rocks and Fort Duquesne bridges projects.

The McKees Rocks Bridge is set to receive $25 million, the West End Bridge will receive $47 million, and the Fort Duquesne Bridge will get $60 million.

In addition to those projects, the Wildwood intersection on Route 8 in Hampton will receive $4.5 million, state officials said.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will make what Casey called “critical repairs” to the bridges. The $132 million in federal funds also will enable PennDOT to reallocate existing funding to additional bridges in Pittsburgh and across the state, according to Casey’s office.

State funding has helped to repair 74 bridges and 7,011 miles of roads in Pennsylvania, Shapiro said.

View the full article at triblive.com.

In different rooms with different voices, peoples across Pennsylvania have been imagining what it would take to decarbonize their economies.

Some of these conversations began before the U.S. Congress enacted its landmark infrastructure bill in 2021, or the energy and climate powerhouse, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Others started afterward, or picked up steam as it became clear that a firehose of funding for greenhouse gas emission reduction schemes would be unleashed in a short period of time. Short, because of the urgency of climate change and the realities of a political system where energy and environmental policy can do a 180 every few years.

Over time, some of those discussions have gotten bigger, pulling in more companies, academics, industrial giants, local government officials and labor unions.

When funding became available for hydrogen hubs, groups coalesced to pursue it, drawing on the foundation of established relationships and already brainstormed ideas.

The same is happening now to pursue a different pot of money — $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants. The money will be administered by state and local government agencies who must first come up with a plan for how to get the most greenhouse gas emission reductions, or the biggest bang for their buck. Applications are due in the next few months.

“We have all these people that have been talking in different rooms for a while,” said DJ Ryan, director of Strategic Initiatives and Policy at the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

Earlier this month, the agency packed about 100 of them into the same room in the Strip District to talk specifics on the climate pollution reduction grant program.

The SPC might apply for it, Mr. Ryan said, or it might be another southwestern Pennsylvania agency. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection surely will, asking for the full $500 million, the cap available to a single applicant.

Both organizations are soliciting public feedback — the DEP’s request for information runs though Jan. 29 — and want to hear from organizations with shovel-ready decarbonization projects.

The state has decided to focus its program on industrial decarbonization, because, according to Pennsylvania’s latest greenhouse gas emissions inventory (with data from 2020), the industrial sector is the largest emitter, accounting for about 30% of the carbon footprint. And it’s widely considered the most difficult to decarbonize.

For residential, commercial and transportation technologies, the overarching logic has been to try and electrify everything possible — that way a cleaner electric grid can become the blanket decarbonization strategy for everything connected to it.

That’s not always available for industrial applications.

Direct burning of fossil fuels in industrial processes — this does not include the electricity used by plants — is the biggest chunk of the industrial GHG emissions pie, followed by oil and gas systems, industrial processes and coal mining.

Pennsylvania, which is fourth among the nation in its greenhouse gas emissions, has a goal of lowering that footprint by 26% by 2025 and by 80% by 2050, compared to 2005 levels.

The state is ahead of schedule. It pretty much met its 2025 goal in 2020, the latest year for which data is available, but the DEP cautioned that was only because of the drop in economic activity during the pandemic shutdowns and “may not be durable.” It expects 2021 data to show an increase.

Moreover, while every other sector of the state’s economy has seen a drop in emissions over the past 15 years — electricity production, for example, plummeted by 44% as natural gas overtook coal in the mix — industrial emissions have continued to rise.

Louie Krak, Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, has been showing up in a lot of the rooms where decarbonization talk happens. Recently, he’s been spreading the word about the grant opportunity, which he said is a “huge initiative for the governor’s office.”

There’s likely to be a continuum of projects that make up the state’s industrial decarbonization program, he said.

“The first line of defense is looking at energy efficiency solutions — incredibly shovel ready and economical to implement,” he said. “But as you start moving down the levers to electrification or fuel switching, a key to success in designing a statewide program is having different options that can be accomplished on different timescales.”

Nothing is set in stone yet, but the DEP is eyeing a program that grants $100 million for each million metric ton of CO2e eliminated, with a minimum reduction of 20,000 metric tons (which would fetch $2 million).

So what kinds of projects might qualify?

The DEP provides a list. It includes electric heat pumps, combined heat and power systems, thermal storage technologies, clean hydrogen, biomass or waste heat recovery, energy efficiency waste reduction methods, electrification, renewable energy and low-emission fuels.

It also allows equipment used to capture carbon emissions from industrial processes and to move and store it underground, or transform that carbon into fuel, chemicals, solid products and other materials.

The agency would like to list specific projects in its application to the EPA, which is due April 1. The federal agency is likely to announce winners in the summer.

For the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission — or whatever other local agency decides to apply — the focus is unlikely to overlap with the DEP’s industrial mindset.

“We’ve been in talks with people who want to do things that are a little more common — installing EV chargers, putting solar panels on roofs; and people developing alternative fuels — not only for vehicles but for airplanes,” Mr. Ryan said.

The gamut runs from big ideas to shovel ready projects. “It’s everything from retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient to moving freight from trucks to the river, for example,” Mr. Ryan said.

Many were in the works; others wouldn’t be deployed without federal funding, he said.

“The ideas have been out there for years and we finally have the opportunity to bring them to fruition,” he said. “We’re going to try to get as much as possible for this region.”

Those interested in submitting comments to the DEP should email ra.ep.cprg@pa.gov. To contact the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, email comments@spcregion.org.

View the full article at post-gazette.com.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will be in Pittsburgh on Friday.

He will join local, federal and state leaders, including U.S. Sen John Fetterman, Congressman Chris Deluzio and Congresswoman Summer Lee to celebrate the more than $ 142 million headed to Pittsburgh.

The funding is through the INFRA and Mega grant program, which was funded by President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law that he announced Thursday in Wisconsin.

The money will go toward rehabbing 10 bridges, and installing a new flood wall downtown to fix flooding problems in the area known as “the bathtub” and it will include new traffic mitigation measures.

View the full article at wtae.com

Economic development tends to happen when different counties within a region help one another by sharing assets, while investing in infrastructure and education, according to Rich Fitzgerald, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

These topics among others were discussed Wednesday, Jan. 31, when the Pittsburgh North Regional Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual legislative breakfast event, where Fitzgerald and Matt Smith, chief growth officer of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, spoke to a crowd of chamber members at The Chadwick, 10545 Perry Highway.

“The good things we have in this region are the diversity of industries,” Fitzgerald said. “I think building upon all those assets we can continue to grow and make this a place where our young people want to stay.”

Fitzgerald took the podium first, and quickly pointed to education as one of the region’s greatest assets.

According to the most recent data from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, Butler County posted a 3% seasonally adjusted jobless rate, the lowest in the region.

Similar figures were seen in the surrounding counties; however, Fitzgerald said he sees over 40,000 job openings on employment website Indeed in the 10 county region he serves, which includes Butler and Allegheny counties.

This is why he advocates for continued investment in community colleges.

“What I think we have is a great community college system,” Fitzgerald said. “BC3 is one of the best community colleges. Acquiring skills there is a lot cheaper than our four year institutions, and you get the skills you need to get the jobs that you need. We want to make sure we invest in that.”

With education comes jobs, a majority of those coming in the manufacturing sector, according to Smith.

“We have been a region that has always made things,” Smith said. “We think that continues with advanced manufacturing. We have that history of manufacturing, but we are not resting on that legacy.”

Other sectors Smith said he believes are a staple of the region includes health care, energy, and robotics and technology.

Manufacturing has had a major footprint in the area for a long time, Smith said, which has spurred development in the robotics and technology sector in Pittsburgh, along with some of the most established technology universities in the country.

“We have the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, two tier one research institutions within 1 square mile of each other,” Smith said. “That is a massive advantage. These tech companies want to be in the same area of the universities because that’s where the talent is.”

Smith said technology companies such as Amazon, Honeywell and Apple, who all have offices in Pittsburgh, tend to rely on the manufacturing businesses within the region for parts. Fitzgerald said the next step is to retain those workers and make sure they stay in the region.

“When you see Steelers fans on TV waving Terrible Towels during away games, you see all those people who left for Denver or Charlotte and so on,” Fitzgerald said.

Creating a better quality of life through transportation is one way to keep those people within the region, Fitzgerald said, which is part of what he and others work on at the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.

“One of the things we are working on is the widening of Route 228,” Fitzgerald said. “There are some pinch points near the Mars area, and that’s investments we can make because if people can’t get to their jobs and customers can’t get to them, it impedes economic growth.”

The event offered a reminder there is still a lot of work to be done to keep the region growing and thriving, but it also served as a way to acknowledge what has already been done so far.

“What I am bullish about is the way we have a bright future,” Fitzgerald said. “What we’ve got to do more of is build upon our strengths and our assets. What we have done is create a lot of jobs that are there right now.”

View the full article at cranberryeagle.com.