By Amy Kapp
Building Keystones of
Balanced
Transportation in
Pennsylvania
T
he executive director of
Huntingdon County
Business
and Industry (HCBI)
(
hcbi.
com
)
sin
ce 2010, 32-year-old
Amy Wise, CEcD, has broad
influence over the economic
development activities taking
place in Huntingdon County, located in
an historic mining region in Pennsylvania,
population 45,000 people. And for the past
several years, she’s been using that influence
to promote a balanced set of transportation
options she believes will help advance both
the commercial and civic interests of the
community she calls home with her hus-
band and three children.
In 2012, Wise joined the Pennsylvania
Keystone Transportation Coalition, a col-
laboration of some 100 diverse organiza-
tions committed to finding a long-term
solution to Pennsylvania’s transportation
funding issue. eir efforts would be
rewarded in November 2013 with the suc-
cessful passing of Act 89, a five-year trans-
portation funding package that includes
millions of dollars in dedicated and com-
petitive funds for walking and biking infra-
structure in the state.
Wise and HCBI are moving ahead to
promote the development of trails, and
AMY
WISE:
biking and walking projects that would
help connect the county’s popular fishing
and hiking amenities, and encourage edu-
cated young professionals—many of whom
trickle from three local colleges—to make
Huntingdon their own for the long term.
RTC recently talked with Wise about
HCBI, the coalition, Act 89 and the future
of active transportation in Huntingdon.
What are HCBI’s main focuses, and what
originally inspired you to get involved in
active-transportation issues?
We provide resources and tools for busi-
nesses of all sizes and needs; it doesn’t mat-
ter if they are a startup or a 500-employee
manufacturer. We do a lot of startups and
retention projections and work a lot with
people exploring entrepreneurship as a
career. We also try to bring new businesses
into the area. Our goal is to create a more
thriving business atmosphere.
One thing that induced us to concen-
trate on transportation is that Huntingdon
County has no four-lane highways, and this
makes it hard for us to attract and retain
manufacturers. So HCBI started to focus
on large transportation projects. Once we
went down that path, we upset a lot of peo-
ple, who said, “Transportation is not only
roads and bridges, but walking and biking,
too.”
Why did you decide to get involved in the
Keystone Coalition?
When we began discussions with the
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
[
PennDOT] about making capacity
improvements to Route 22, an interior cor-
ridor, they told us, “We don’t have enough
money to maintain what we have, let alone
add capacity.”
It was evident that the gas tax, which
funds a lot of things in our commonwealth,
including transportation, was a big part
of the issue. It hadn’t been adjusted since
1997.
Here we are paying 2014 costs with a
fund that hasn’t been adjusted for inflation
and other economic factors.
It’s not popular to increase taxes by
any means. But we needed a viable solu-
tion. at’s when we got involved with
the Keystone Coalition. We had similar
missions, and there were opportunities to
further their goals and use their resources to
further ours. We were both asking for the
same things. I became more active in lobby-
ing and started getting requests to talk and
be on panels…and the coalition became a
natural fit.
rails
to
trails
winter.15
14