S.A.V.E. Rt. 41, Southern Chester County, PA: PennDOT's scheme will waste scarce transportation tax dollars

PennDOT's scheme will waste scarce transportation tax dollars

The huge cost of a new four-lane highway comes at a time when state and federal budgets are being slashed. Pennsylvania is confronting a $650 million projected budget deficit while the Bush Administration proposes to cut federal highway spending by $9 billion. Pennsylvania will lose $371 million in federal highway funds under the Administration's budget. Projections from the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Department of Transportation show federal fuel tax collections falling $9 billion short of early estimates. This projected shortfall triggers cuts in the highway funds distributed to states under the Federal Aid Highway program pursuant to the 1998 Transportation Equity Act (TEA 21).

Unfortunately, the budget cuts come after PennDOT began a major policy shift away from highway maintenance and toward new highway construction. Pursuant to this questionable initiative, the State has reduced maintenance expenditures for state highways by 2.1% and has increased expenditures by 5.6%, all based on the assumption that federal highway spending in Pennsylvania would increase by 35.7%. See Pennsylvania House 2001 Budget Review.

Therefore, wasteful spending to construct the PennDOT PA 41 Expressway will prevent expenditures on truly necessary highway infrastructure maintenance.

The cost to expand Route 41 to four lanes and to construct four-lane bypasses around Chatham and Avondale will likely exceed $200,000,000, a cost of approximately $20 million per mile. While PennDOT estimates the cost to be somewhere between $15 and $20 million per mile, it will likely be much higher. For example, the cost to construct the comparable Exton bypass in Chester County, which was completed in 1995, was $24.1 million per mile. See Priority Projects for the Appalachian International Trade Corridor.

A four-lane Route 41 is likely to cost even more, however. PennDOT's plan will require an elevated four-lane highway in several areas to span the many sensitive wetlands and waterbodies within the White Clay Creek Watershed, a federally-designated Wild & Scenic River. Virtually all ten miles of PennDOT's proposed new four-lane highway would be located within the protected wild and scenic river area. Moreover, the new roadway will need to span at least six protected streams, including the East and Middle Branches of the White Clay Creek. The National Park Service, which must approve any project impacting on the White Clay Creek, prohibits the construction of pilings in any protected tributary of the White Clay Creek under the White Clay Creek Watershed Management Plan ("White Clay Plan"). The White Clay Plan requires that "[b]ridges should be: [c]lear-span structures (means spanning the entire width of the waterway, and having no piers, piles, abutments or other structures located below the ordinary high water mark)." See White Clay Plan, p. 62.

In order to achieve the necessary spanning distances mandated by the Plan and AASHTO design grades, any design for the four-lane highway will require elevated structures extending perhaps 50 to 60 feet into the air. These design requirements will add substantially to the overall engineering and construction costs, aside from the aesthetic and visual costs. Accordingly, the cost of PennDOT's new four-lane highway is likely to equal or exceed the $24,000,000 per mile cost of the Exton Bypass.