The following article was taken from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article. Please keep this ongoing project in mind when planning your travel to and from CYM Wexford.
Route 19 improvements begin on Wexford Flats
Project has been in the works 20 years
Monday, January 31, 2011
By Jon Schmitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A long-awaited project to improve one of the region's most congested and dangerous roads will begin today with preliminary work on the 2.3-mile section of Route 19 known as Wexford Flats. Golden Triangle Construction Co. of Imperial, the contractor on the two-year, $18.1 million project, will begin removing signs, shrubbery and other obstacles from the work area in Pine and McCandless.
The work will occur from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. weekdays through early March and may cause single-lane closures in both directions during those times, said Jim Struzzi, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Columbia Gas has notified PennDOT that it will begin relocating gas lines next Monday, working from 9:30 p.m. weekdays to 6:30 a.m. the following morning. That work also may cause lane restrictions.
More work will begin in coming weeks as 11 different utilities, including gas, phone, cable, fiber optic, water and sewer agencies and companies prepare their infrastructure for the anticipated start of road construction in March. The project will stretch from just north of Longvue Avenue in McCandless to about a quarter-mile south of Wallace Road in Pine.
The four travel lanes will be widened to 11 feet. A 14-foot-wide center turning lane will be added. The project also calls for improvements to eight signalized intersections, new sidewalks and curbs and better drainage. Signals will be replaced at North Chapel Road-Manor Road, Bonnie View Drive, Brown Road, the entrance to Wright Pontiac, Brooktree Road-Brooker Drive, North Meadows Drive, Richard Road-Reichold Road and the entrance to North Allegheny High School.
Because of the narrow lanes, heavy traffic and lack of turning lanes, the stretch has been the scene of several crashes. PennDOT has said 395 reportable accidents occurred there from 2005 to 2009, with two people killed.
Improvements to the road have been talked about for more than 20 years. PennDOT and municipalities had to work through numerous design and funding issues in a corridor that is far from ideal for highway expansion. The state had to acquire parts of nearly 100 properties to widen the road, which is lined with shopping plazas, car dealerships and the entrance to North Allegheny.
About 28,000 vehicles use that section of Route 19 on an average day.
PennDOT has hired the Airport Corridor Transportation Association to help provide day-to-day information about construction activities to the many businesses along the route. When road work begins, traffic will be restricted to a single lane in each direction with a center lane for turns. Access to all businesses will be maintained. The center lane will not be open during nighttime work.
The project schedule calls for work to be done south of Brooktree Road this season and north of Brooktree next year, with a pause in construction during the winter. All work is scheduled for completion by November 2012. First published on January 31, 2011 at 12:00 am
