Turnpike commission announces location of Route 130 interchange

A turnpike interchange will be installed near the intersection of Nike Site Road, Sandy Hill Road, Pleasant Valley Road and Route 130 in Penn Township, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission announced.

The interchange, which will fall between the Irwin and Pittsburgh interchanges, will be accessible for westbound and eastbound drivers. It was officially announced in October 2021.

The preliminary design phase, which started about two months ago, will take two years, township Secretary/Manager Mary Perez said.

The project will then go into final design — which will take about four years, Perez said — before construction ensues, according to the project website.

Turnpike spokesperson Crispin Havener said construction will take about a year once it starts.

The turnpike commission told the township in a meeting two weeks ago that the project will take about nine years to complete, Ward 4 Commissioner Chuck Miller said.

The turnpike commission already has purchased some land in the interchange area to use for project staging, Miller said, but it plans to resell it once the project is complete.

“They have no interest in being property owners,” Miller said.

Although the interchange will make it easier for residents to access the turnpike, Miller has some concerns about impacts on Route 130’s traffic infrastructure — most notably with an ambulance station on Sandy Hill Road.

“My primary concern is our ambulance base,” Miller said. “Not that the businesses and homes don’t mean anything, but you have to have an ambulance base centrally located to be able to respond.”

It has not been determined if the station will be affected, Miller said.

The turnpike commission will move the shed on Nike Site Road to the other side of the road, Miller added.

Marjie Previc is “just worried about finding some place to move to.”

Previc owns Marjie’s Flowers, a flower shop in Crossroads Plaza next to the interchange location on Route 130, another building that might be affected by the interchange.

“It’s going to be a year or so before anything comes to fruition,” Previc said, “so I’ll worry about it when the time comes.”

Because the interchange will have “open road tolling,” Havener said, it will take up less space than the “typical, old-style toll booth system.”

He said it will not “extend very far outside of that block where the interchange will be.”

Miller said residents’ opinions on the interchange are split.

“(Community members) are either 100% for it or 100% against it,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like people are too comfortable with being middle of the road.”

The interchange will “provide improved access to neighboring counties and employment centers from the turnpike and encourage economic development in Westmoreland County,” the turnpike commission said in a statement.

The turnpike commission will host a presentation on the project. Additional information on the meeting and the project’s progress will be announced on the project website.

Perez hopes there will be consistent communication from the turnpike commission to dispel any rumors about the project.

“I’m glad to have this project site set up and we can link it,” Perez said, “because I’m hoping people will go to that — if they keep it updated — and it will stop a lot of the misinformation that’s out there on Facebook.”