The 7.8-mile Pennsylvania leg of the Mon/Fayette’s Mason Dixon Link is expected to be completed by Thanksgiving. It will extend north from the West Virginia line through Springhill and Georges townships in Fayette County to a hook-up with the 3.5-mile Chadville Demonstration Project, which opened in 1992.

The Chadville Project or Pa. Route 43, the same designation the new expressway will carry, now serves as a connector to Fayette Business Park off Route 857 just south of Uniontown, from U.S. Route 119.

All construction contracts for the Pennsylvania leg of the Mason Dixon Link have been awarded, the last on July 7, 1998. There are seven totaling a collective $89.6 million.

Ultimately, the 12-mile Mason Dixon Link will tie in with Interstate 68 and Route 857 in Monongalia County, West Virginia, just east of Morgantown near Cheat Lake. The West Virginia Department of Transportation’s Division of Highways will build the 4.2 miles of the expressway south of the Pennsylvania line. It is targeted for completion in late 2001.

Also well under construction is the 17-mile Mon/Fayette Expressway Project that will extend north from Interstate 70 and the Turnpike Commission’s six-mile Turnpike 43 expressway in eastern Washington County to Pa. Route 51 in southeastern Allegheny County. It is targeted for completion in late 2001 or early 2002.

Bidding for all construction sections that constitute the I-70-to-Route 51 Project is scheduled to conclude by the end of 1999. In addition to the two end points, interchanges will be located at Coyle Curtain Road, Pa. Route 136 (near Ringgold High School) and Finleyville-Elrama Road in Washington County.

A mainline toll plaza will be built in the Peters Creek Valley area of Jefferson Hills Borough, Allegheny County about one mile southwest of the interchange with Pa. Route 51, also in Jefferson Hills. There will be toll collection facilities on the ramps at each of the Washington County interchanges. Southbound customers will pay when they get enter, northbound customers when they exit.

Prospective alignments for the two other Mon/Fayette Expressway component projects remain under study as the Turnpike Commission continues to gather data for Environmental Impact Statements.

One of those is the Pittsburgh link, which is to extend north from Jefferson Hills to connections with Interstate 376 in Pittsburgh and near Monroeville. The other project in the environmental study phase is from Uniontown to the Brownsville area.

The complete Mon/Fayette Expressway system is to stretch some 65 miles south from Pittsburgh through the Monongahela River Valley and western Fayette County.

It will improve connections to redevelopment sites in the economically depressed Monongahela River towns where the steel and coal industries once flourished. The expressway will provide faster and safer travel options for through traffic, particularly commercial vehicles, that now clog heavily signaled or undersized arteries such as Pa. Route 51, Pa. Route 88, Pa. Route 837, Pa. Route 857 and U.S. Route 40.

Along with its northern spur through the Turtle Creek Valley, the Mon/Fayette Expressway also will provide a bypass around the Squirrel Hill Tunnel on I-376, one of the Pittsburgh region’s most notorious bottlenecks.