Pennsylvania Highways Blog

Global Positioning Satellites, or GPS, has revolutionized the world. Now with the help of GPS-enabled devices, being lost is quickly becoming obsolete. Not only can people be found who were lost and possibly injured in the deepest wooded area, but drivers can find that hidden shortcut, and walkers and joggers can record their latest achievement.

One of the uses of GPS chips has been inclusion in cell phones over the past decade. Aside from being able to locate you in the event of an emergency when calling 911, it can help navigate unfamiliar territory. The advent of the smartphone has brought apps utilizing the GPS chip such as Google Maps and Foursquare.

"What is Foursquare?" you may ask. It is a social networking platform like Twitter and Facebook, but unlike those websites, Foursquare gets you away from your computer and out exploring. Users can "check in" to various locations from their cell phones, which earn them points and badges. Check in more times at one place, and you will become "Mayor" of that location which might earn you a perk.

Foursquare is about where Twitter was two years ago. It is on the cusp of being the "next big thing" in the world of Web 2.0. Just as organizations jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, they are jumping, or I should say checking in, on the Foursquare bandwagon. VisitPA (the Department of Tourism) has three badges, PA Retail Polka, PA 4 Score & 7, and PA Shooflyer, that users can earn by checking in at certain places around the Commonwealth.

Now Pennsylvania Highways has joined them, and Washington State Department of Transportation and Missouri Department of Transportation, with a Foursquare page. Right now it will be used to give tips on highway-related check in points such as the Squirrel Hill Tunnel or one of the Turnpike interchanges, but only read them on the website or let a passenger read them to you. Perhaps a badge or two will be offered if Foursquare permits it in the future, but before you ask, there will not be a "Pothole Badge."

http://foursquare.com/pahighways

It has been three years since there was a holiday edition of the longest running road enthusiast meets in southwestern Pennsylvania, but that and the streak of Saturday-only meets came to an end today. I'd like to thank all who traveled both near and far to attend, even with the snow that was falling in the area and the winter storm churning up the Eastern Seaboard.

The meet began at 12 PM at the Route 40 Classic Diner on what is now Business US 40 in Brownsville. Food was good as well as the conversations. My Maryland counterpart, Mike Pruett, brought a copy of an old trails guide book, a precursor to the modern road atlas, from the late 1920s for everyone to peruse and I brought some recent Pennsylvania officials from 2006 to 2010 for anyone who needed to fill gaps in their collections.

Since these holiday meets are on a smaller scale than the ones during warmer months, the tour was not too extensive. After lunch, we headed down Business US 40 into Brownsville for a taste of the old National Road and to check out the work on connecting PA Turnpike 43 to the PA 88 expressway in West Brownsville. The new alignment, which leaves PA 88, is quite evident as swings east to cross the Monongahela River. The former intersection of old and new PA 88 has been reconfigured to be a continual route through the future interchange, which leaves up for debate whether or not PA 88 will be moved back to its former route into West Brownsville or become multiplexed with PA Turnpike 43 to US 40.

The cloverleaf at PA Turnpike 43 and US 40 is temporarily a partial one due to ongoing construction to upgrade the segment of PA 88 that will be incorporated into the Mon-Fayette Expressway. The northbound lanes are being rebuilt and what is interesting is that the overhead gantry that was before the cloverleaf has been replaced with a blue, mono-tube gantry that is seemingly becoming standard on the Mon-Fayette.

Back across the Lane Bane Bridge, we picked up the old road and stopped at the Searights Toll House. Unlike the last Winter SWPA Meet, there were no broken windows nor damaged screen doors to report. It was good to see that a security system was installed as indicated by a sign by the entrance. Here we said goodbye to half of the attendees and the rest of us continued east on US 40 to drive through the new PA Turnpike 43/US 119 stack interchange. As we took the old route east, we took the new route back to Brownsville where we said our farewells, and headed to our respective destinations.

The brisk morning of December 13 marked the beginning of the end for the long-awaited Uniontown-to-Brownsville section of the long-awaited Mon-Fayette Expressway. It was then that the Turnpike Commission finally opened the large PA Turnpike 43 interchange with US 119 and PA 51/Pittsburgh Street in Uniontown.

With the SWPA XMAS Meet a week away, I decided to make a trip today to scout the locations for the tour. Unfortunately, I didn’t get there until dusk, so none of the pictures came out clearly enough to post but with the few ones that I did take, I was able to update the US 119 and PA Turnpike 43 Exit Guides. The interchange itself is quite an impressive Semi-Directional T, with the diamond interchange with PA 51 underneath. What is strange is that the ramp from US 119 northbound is only one lane, which should be two since it is carrying the PA Turnpike 43 designation.

While both directions of US 119 have a diagramatical sign for this complex junction, the guide sign for Turnpike 43 heading southbound on US 119 has the control cities of Brownsville and Pittsburgh while northbound it is just Pittsburgh.

As of now, there are no exit numbers for any of the interchanges between the Chadville Demonstration Project in South Uniontown and the new interchange at Pittsburgh Street. Not surprising considering that there is only one PA Turnpike 43 trailblazer on US 40 westbound/US 119 northbound just before the Main Street interchange. While the US 40 and US 119 shields are posted together, the poor PA Turnpike 43 is by itself about 30 feet before the other two. Poor PA Turnpike 43, ostracized by the black and white shields! Heading southbound there is only one mention of PA Turnpike 43 on a pull-through sign at the Main Street interchange, then nothing until the 40/119 split and only then is it denoted as PA 43 which it has since that section was completed almost two decades ago.

The segment from the interchange to Exit 15 at Northgate Highway also opened to traffic Monday. Northbound traffic exiting and southbound traffic entering at that interchange will have to pay a toll.

Today I stopped at the welcome center on I-70 at the Maryland state line in Warfordsburg and picked up a copy of the latest official state highway map. I am surprised PennDOT even bothered to print one this late in the year that isn't a "B" version, especially since there will be a new governor come Tuesday. These are the changes since the 2009 edition, all of which involve the extension of I-376:

Allegheny County/Pittsburgh Inset
I-376 extended west beyond I-279 to multiplex with US 22/US 30 and replace PA 60 and Interstate Business Loop 376 replaced Business PA 60

Beaver County/Lawrence County/New Castle Inset
I-376 replaced PA 60 and PA Turnpike 60

Mercer County
I-376 replaced PA 60 and PA 760 replaced PA 60 from I-80 to Sharon

There are two mentions of the new 511 system: one on the back cover under the list of welcome centers and another at the top next to the legend.

Rarely do I find an error on the official maps, but this year there is a blatant one near the junction of the Penn-Lincoln Parkway and PA 60 west of Pittsburgh. A US 22/US 322 shield is located where there should be, and last year was, a US 22/US 30 shield.

It has the same dimensions as the previous year's and this year's cover features a view of Johnstown from the Inclined Plane station above the city in Westmont. You can view the map at PennDOT's GIS page.

After a six year hiatus, the second SEPA Road Enthusiast Meet was held today. I'd like to thank all who attended and for making the trip for the second meet in the Greater Philadelphia area, which has taken the record for attendance at a Pennsylvania meet from the 2003 SWPA.

The meet began as usual at 12 PM at the Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery, home of the Route 113 India Pale Ale, on what else, PA 113 in Phoenixville. Some of the attendees did partake of the Route 113 IPA, or as PennDOT would call it the SR 0113 India Pale Ale, which just might be the official beverage for road enthusiasts over the age of 21. The food was good as well as the conversations. Many of the attendees brought road-related materials to peruse as well as to keep: Adam Froehlig - various state official maps from Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania; Doug Kerr - I-87 Northway maps; H. B. Elkins - goodie bags full of Kentucky maps and other Kentucky Transportation Cabinet paraphernalia and I brought a planning map for the Keystone State's Interstate System from the early 1960s which I had acquired from eBay in the mid-2000s.

After lunch, we hopped in our cars and followed PA 23 to the first stop which was at the Philadelphia Traffic Management Center in the PennDOT District 6-0 headquarters in King of Prussia. Thanks go to Len Pundt, who worked for PennDOT, who helped arrange the tour. The TMC, which was called the Traffic Control Center when I toured it in 2004, has been upgraded and now includes two video walls with feeds from traffic cameras around the Philadelphia area as well as content from the Internet and TV. In what seems to have become a constant in Pennsylvania meets that involve visiting a traffic management center, we were witness to an accident on the Platt Bridge tying up traffic.

Continuing east on PA 23, we stopped at the Schuylkill Parkway overpass just north of Bridgeport. Len described what was to have happened with that project, which would have been the eastern end of the "Goat Path" Expressway. Len gave us some background on this abandoned project, which is now used as a driver training course for the State Police. He also explained how PennDOT got into the funding predicament which led to it cancelling this and numerous other expressway projects around the Commonwealth in 1977. One of the points he made was that cancelling these projects did initially save money, but now there is no way to build these to solve the traffic issues of the 21st Century because right-of-way acquisition alone would be astronomically high to carve these highways through dense urbanized areas.

We bid Len adieu and took I-276/PA Turnpike eastbound to PA 309 northbound to observe some of the rehabilitation project that has been taking place since 2003. As soon as joining the Fort Washington Expressway, the attendees could see a vastly improved expressway from the one that had been serving commuters since it was built as a new route for US 309. We encountered the last remaining section to be undergoing rehabilitation heading north and exited in the construction zone at Norristown Road to go west to Bethlehem Pike which was the pre-expressway route of US 309. Traveling north to Cedar Hill Road, which crosses over PA 309, allowed us to view the progress on reconstruction of the northern-most segment.

After stopping at the overpass to see the work, we continued northeast to PA 63 then turned northwest to go to the intersection with US 202 to see the progress on the US 202 Parkway project. A new alignment is underway at PA 63 and work is taking place south along the current alignment. We passed some of the work along US 202 as we headed back to the Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery where we said our farewells, and headed to our respective destinations.