That will be posted in the fall as a technical report attached to the environmental assessment document.
Regarding Highland and other roads in Parkland (i.e.: Hulmeville road), there will be impact to the neighborhood as it will become even more of a cut through than it already is with the closure or limitation of frontage road access to the neighborhoods. Can PennDOT include those studies?
As part of the EA document, we will provide the traffic and safety study. Included in that is the origin and destination study for the redistribution of traffic so you can see where it’s anticipated traffic will go or be redirected. We studied where people wanted to go when they left Route 1, and how many dwell in the local neighborhoods adjacent to Route 1. A fairly large number of people that are currently being redirected live adjacent to Route 1. It’s a fairly large proportion compared to pass through and cut through traffic.
There was a noise wall installed on the southbound section of route 1 past the high school. Why would there not be one installed along the Langhorne Manor Borough section? We are adjacent to the service road. There have been dozens of accidents between Bellevue and Station Avenue. One accident involved a car crashing through our fence into our backyard a year ago. Wouldn’t a noise wall also protect homes from roadway accidents?
The preliminary design sound wall evaluation is currently under development as part of the environmental clearance process, the results of which we will publish as a part of the EA document when that is finalized. Even at that point, abatement consideration is still considered preliminary, and no commitments are made until we get to the final design portion of the project. Once the impacts have been identified in the corridor, the detailed abatement recommendations are still pending at that point.
Sound walls are not designed or intended to provide safety improvements. Decisions regarding sound walls will be based upon the Federal Highway and PennDOT’s warranted, feasible and reasonable process as outlined in their PennDOT publication 24.
Sound walls in a corridor are typically protected by a single face concrete barrier in front of them to keep people from hitting the noise wall. That by default becomes a safety measure with having a concrete barrier in front of the noise wall to keep traffic from hitting the wall or leaving the highway.
Why did PennDOT reject a safer and far less costly alternative plan put forth by Langhorne Borough’s traffic engineering consultant? This plan which eliminates the partial cloverleaf and keeps service roads open, thereby avoids funneling far more traffic into historic Langhorne Borough.
PennDOT and the design team worked and coordinated with Langhorne Borough’s traffic/safety engineer at the time. We reviewed their analysis and a lot of what they were suggesting actually did not meet what the project purpose and need was. It did not do what they were claiming it would do.
Can the health and noise impact studies that PennDOT undertook to measure the impact of air and noise pollution on residents on 413 be shared with the community, including the methodology and results of the study?
Information that we collect from the air quality assessment and noise assessment will be incorporated into the environmental assessment document including the environmental clearance process. That information is a summary of some of the technical analysis we do. That information will be made public during the draft EA assessment, and the project technical documents will be made available as well. We will be looking for comments primarily on the summary information that will come out as part of the EA document.
The information will be made available in a variety of ways. It will be in person at the PennDOT District 6 offices. It will be made available at various public locations throughout the multiple boroughs and townships at their offices. It will be made available online on the website and often times at a public library. We work to make sure that it is accessible to all individuals in as easy a way as possible.
Has an assessment been done for the increase of traffic onto Gilliam from Bellevue to Hulmeville Road. How will an increase of traffic impact the safety of pedestrians and school children along Gillam Avenue?
We did include that as part of our traffic study with the updated data that we collected, we assessed more intersections along Gilliam and as part of that we also do safety analysis to attempt to predict crash information. That isn’t specific to pedestrians that’s for vehicular traffic but we do assess that.
What is the purpose of the bicycle path along Route 1? Where does it go to, what nodes does it link? Who is asking for it and promising to use it?
This is being discussed with the municipalities and the public officials. The potential loop we have looked at provides various connections whether it’s in areas where service roads are removed and it is a standalone shared use path. If it’s in conjunction with a stretch of service road that needs to be maintained and those would be accommodated on the shoulder. The stretches up at the north end where it would be able to use existing sidewalk that’s currently out there.
So not that it’s going to be a continuous shared-use path for the entire stretch but multiple forms of connections that create the full 4-mile loop that runs down from Highland Avenue at the south end and loop up along those existing service roads up to the 413 Pine Street connections with the proposed sidewalk that we have up there.
We are still in the initial stages as far as gathering feedback and was just an idea, bikes and pedestrians and multimodal is a hot topic these days and trying to provide some of those additional connections to the local communities is something we were putting out there as an option to discuss with the municipalities. Not that it is set in stone, and it could happen for the entirety or could be one or none of the municipalities.
Further studies have not been put out to date to get any sort of commitments from the municipalities affected by it. We have referenced the Bucks County Bicycle and Pedestrian master plan that was previously created just to look at some concepts where previous surveys had indicated potentials for bike paths. We are using other references and studies as a basis for the concept.
Has there been consideration for when there are big events at the HS like graduation and how that traffic will impact the proposed roundabout?
We have had direct coordination with Neshaminy High School, it’s been a few years since contact, but we will reengage with them soon. We have made adjustments to some of the design per the request due to those large gatherings.
Regarding the Fairhill Avenue, Highland Avenue and Old Lincoln Highway intersection, leaving it signalized so that it can control the traffic signal itself. The roundabout itself is not an impediment to traffic flow especially if it’s heavy in one direction, so that should not have any negative effect on the traffic flow of a large event coming out of the school.
Can you email out this video after the meeting and if so how can I get on that list?
The video of this meeting will be posted on the PennDOT website. Along with PDFs of the slides.
If service roads can be left in place in certain areas why is it not possible to retain all of the service roads?
At the end of the day, the intention was to look at bike and pedestrian mobility within the service roads and look at opportunities where we could remove the service roads because the service roads themselves are maintained by the local municipalities and not PennDOT.
Obviously as long as the frontage or the service roads are detached from US 1 they can be retained, but they will not have access to US 1. At that point they would just be local one-way connector roads between say Bellevue and the Southern Limit of the project on either side.