The Route 22 Miracle

When I was in college, the drive from Altoona to Pittsburgh along Route 22 took two hours and steady nerves. It was mostly two lanes, and not much more than a paved pioneer trail that largely followed the Indian footpaths of antiquity up and over the Allegheny Mountains. The ascending road was often slowed by fully loaded coal trucks, but broken-yellow-lined passing zones provided the opportunity to zip past these lumbering hulks — provided the fully loaded coal trucks barreling downhill in the oncoming lane were far enough away to avoid.

Today, after billions of dollars, this section of Route 22 is almost entirely four safe, smooth lanes of relatively new concrete. Those harrowing curves have been straightened out by the simple expediency of hacking through the mountains rather than following their meandering contours. Thanks to this sizable investment and brute-force taming of nature's winding design, the trip from Altoona to Pittsburgh now takes...

Two hours.

Only in Pennsylvania.

The brakes on what should now be a much faster trip have been applied by the genius of PennDot. No fewer than 16 traffic lights have been installed along the new 22, all but a few of them on the 30 miles between Indiana and Monroeville. And in a classic example of Pennsylvania's traffic management prowess, these lights are so imperfectly synchronized that travelers see red at nearly every single one. Murrysville, which was once a mess of traffic constricted by two lanes is now a four-lane mess of traffic constricted by one red light after another. Sixty-five MPH zones through the mountains are clipped by 20 MPH in the mile or two leading up to and immediately after intersections that had never existed before — and wouldn't exist now if engineers had noticed the ample land surrounding that would make merge and turning lanes possible.

Of course, that would make sense. And this is Pennsylvania, after all.

But wait. There's more. In winter, it's not uncommon for road conditions on the new 22 over Cresson Mountain to become so severe that the road is closed and traffic is diverted to...

Wait for it...

Old Route 22 over Cresson Mountain.

In the days when this stretch of road was being built, signs bragged that the construction was providing "Jobs for Pennsylvanians." No doubt it did. In fact, were it not for constant road repair and construction projects, our unemployment rate would probably be 30%. But at some point, someone should probably remind our illustrious transportation department that roads aren't about construction jobs. They're about, well, transportation.

Maybe then, several billion dollars will actually build a more efficient road.

Don't hold your breath, though. This is Pennsylvania, after all.