DUQUESNE - Governor Tom Ridge returned to his roots in the Pittsburgh area's Steel Valley in March to announce that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will invest another $338 million in its Mon/Fayette Expressway and Southern Beltway projects.

"You and I know that the Mon/Fayette Expressway and the Southern Beltway have been lingering in the slow lane for a long, long time," the Governor told an enthusiastic audience of some 200 at the historic City Center of Duquesne along the Monongahela River in Allegheny County. "It's time to move them into the passing lane, depress the accelerator and start moving as quickly as possible."

Modern transportation links are seen as crucial to the economic recovery of the Mon River towns that bore the moniker "Steel City." City Center of Duquesne, as an example, is a sprawling mill site where steel was made for 98 years, until 1984. At its peak, the complex that U.S. Steel had operated since 1901 included six blast furnaces. It is now being marketed for other ventures by the Regional Industrial Development Corporation (RIDC) of Pittsburgh.

Governor Ridge announced that $230 million investment will enable the Turnpike Commission to complete final design and right-of-way acquisition for two components of the proposed Mon/Fayette Expressway. They are a 15-mile project from Uniontown north to the Brownsville area, primarily in Fayette County, and a 24-mile project from PA Route 51 in southeastern Allegheny County north to Pittsburgh.

Based on preliminary design, the project in Allegheny County is to fork after crossing the Mon River from Duquesne into North Versailles. One prong would continue north to Interstate 376 near Monroeville. The other would veer west into Pittsburgh to link again with I-376 toward the Golden Triangle. Together, the prongs would create a long-awaited bypass around the Squirrel Hill Tunnel on I-376, one of the Pittsburgh area's most notorious traffic bottlenecks.

Governor Ridge also announced that the Turnpike Commission will use $15 million to complete final design of the Southern Beltway's six-mile "Findlay Connector" south from PA Route 60 at Pittsburgh International Airport to U.S. Route 22 in Robinson, Washington County.

The Findlay Connector is one of three independent components of the proposed 30-mile Southern Beltway. The beltway would form a quarter-circle between the airport in western Allegheny County, another important economic hub, and the Mon/Fayette Expressway near Finleyville, Washington County.

Alignment options are still under study for each of the two other Southern Beltway projects - from U.S. Route 22 to Interstate 79 (approximately 13 miles) and from I-79 to the Mon/Fayette Expressway (approximately 11 miles).

"It still won't do any good if we can't get people and goods to and fro, so you need good roads and highways," the Governor said. "Indeed, we do all these things to create an environment where we can create more jobs, family-sustaining jobs for people who know how to work hard and who have historically worked hard in this region for generation after generation."