Monongahela Valley residents will find out Wednesday how they will have to change their daily travel habits as a result of construction of the next section of the Mon-Fayette Expressway.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike will hold an open house from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Jefferson Hills Municipal Building on Old Clairton Road. Turnpike officials and representatives of lead contractor Trumbull Corp. will be available to talk about the sequence of work that begins next Monday with tree removal.
The session will include details on road closures, detours and blasting areas during construction.
The work will be the first of seven contracts for construction of the expressway’s southern section from Jefferson Hills to Duquesne, which could cost $1.3 billion and take more than five years to build. Trumbull has a $214 million contract to build the 3.1-mile section from Route 51 in Jefferson Hills to Coal Valley Road in West Mifflin.
Johnson, Mirmiran & Thompson Inc. of Hunt, Md., will serve as construction manager for the project, making sure it meets the turnpike’s cost, schedule and quality requirements.
The first contract will include moving 4 million cubic yards of earth — each the size of a small refrigerator — and building six bridges. The bridges include five on the new toll road’s main line and one on Route 885 above the highway.
An electronic tolling gantry also will be part of that section.
The highway will be built sequentially from south to north, and each section will open as it is completed.
The turnpike has funding through the state’s oil franchise tax to build the southern section of the highway, which has been talked about since the 1960s. Design of the northern section is on hold until the agency is sure it has the money to finish construction from Duquesne to the Parkway East in Monroeville.
The expressway begins at Interstate 68 in Cheat Lake, W. Va., and runs 54 miles to Jefferson Hills, the last new section to open in 2012.
The open house information also will be available on the project website, www.paturnpike.com/monfayette. The public can submit questions and comments on the website.
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.