At this stage of the project we have not looked at right-of-way impacts in detail.
How will the studies of possible Native American burial sites be determined?
Native American tribal consultation will be conducted as part of the project. It is going to be completed by a combination of PennDOT and the Federal Highway Administration. This is an ongoing process as part of the environmental clearance.
Please explain the reasons for eliminating the service roads? If it is safety, exactly what has occurred to support the determination that the current design is unsafe?
From a safety standpoint, there have been multiple fatalities along the corridor for mainline Route 1 traffic. There are no shoulders, so there is no recovery for errant vehicles if somebody has an issue. There is nowhere to pull off if you have a breakdown. The raised concrete traffic islands do not prevent vehicles from leaving the highway and there have been incidents of vehicles leaving the highway, crossing the raised concrete traffic islands, and ending up either in somebody’s front yard or in another accident along the service roads themselves.
The reality is to improve it we need to provide more room for maneuverability along the mainline travel lanes so that requires an inside shoulder and a more substantial outside shoulder for vehicles refuge and concrete barriers to prevent errant vehicles from leaving the highway. Also, the West Interchange Road overpass has concrete piers in the traffic island that are a hazard and are of concern.
Why can’t you just take out the median strips and keep the access roads? The traffic at Pine Street is so heavy now.
The study for this project started back in 2011, and the initial project design was to eliminate the raised concrete traffic islands, to eliminate the intermediate crossovers because those were where the high rates of crashes occur or have a tendency to occur and still leave the access/service roads open at the northern and southern limits.
We presented this to the public and got extensive push back on that option. We had a public plans display and then Senator Ferry led a town hall back in 2014 regarding this. So, at that point PennDOT made the decision to advance the southern two projects RC1 and RC2 and reconsider the RC3 corridor and look at alternatives. The primary alternative being looking at interchanges and closing the frontage road because of the concerns from the initial public involvement.
I have a concern about the flow-through traffic that will go to the side streets of the borough to avoid the 213 and 413 intersection.
With the delay only increasing by one second, I don’t think that it will encourage people to take local roads. If the delay between the build and no-build was greater, that would be possible, but anyone that would do that in the build condition would already be doing that.
Has consideration been given to the effect on emergency vehicles when access roads have been eliminated?
This would operate as any standard limited access highway. It would operate like the limited access sections north and south of this area as far as emergency vehicle access. If need be, there could be discussion about intermediate access gates, but that would be a further discussion with the emergency management services.
Did you touch base if the Access Road on the Northbound side will be eliminated after Fox Court? If so, will there be a traffic study conducted on the impact on the neighborhood?
That service road would be able to be removed north of Fox Court and otherwise hammer head cul-de-sacs would be provided for some of those additional side road termini, such as at Fee Avenue. From a traffic standpoint all the traffic that would be using that retained section of service road approaching Fox Court would all be local traffic.
Residential traffic that dwell or reside in the local areas is the anticipation it would be very limited like through-put traffic (as) it would be very inconvenient; it wouldn’t make any sense to use as a cut through. It would only be the dozen or so houses that are along the service road North of Park Avenue and then on Timber Lane itself that would otherwise be coming into Fox Court that don’t reside within that area in the first place.
There was a truck study undertaken by Langhorne Borough residents that showed considerable truck and auto traffic already on 413. How much more traffic will the proposed interchange on 413 put on 413? How does PennDOT evaluate this impact?
Our analysis is showing that as far as additional traffic at 413 we are showing additional left turns from Pine Street onto Maple (Avenue). It should be noted that a lot of this redistributed traffic was coming to this intersection from Maple (Avenue), so most of the new traffic on 413 was already coming into the borough through 213.
We are also looking at extending that northbound left (lane) further south down to Richardson since it’s currently just a painted median in the first place to provide more left turn room and adding left turn signals. Currently the intersection is projected, if we wouldn’t build the project, to be a 31 second delay per car and with the project it would be 32 seconds in the PM. When I was saying there is no real difference, it’s really a one (1) second difference between the build and the no-build condition.
Please define a shared use path. If the main travel paths remain 2 lanes in each direction, what will divide them from the shared use path?
There would be a single face barrier to provide a substantial barrier plus the shared use path is essentially just a side path. There are different terms used to talk about very similar situations. With the location of the trail being detached from the roadway it would be considered a shared use path in this situation. There is a grass buffer as well, so they are not right behind the barrier. The shared-use path can function as any type of trail accommodating bikes, pedestrians, and other non-motorized vehicles.
Has there been consideration of closing the Bellevue exits and expanding the Maple Ave exits to preserve the historic district?
If the question is with regards to removing the proposed interchange or not having any interchange in the Pine Street / Bellevue area and pushing all the traffic to Maple Avenue, that wasn’t directly looked at. The reality is 213 interchange and 213 itself heading into the borough is heavily traveled so pushing all the traffic from the 413 Bellevue Area to Maple Avenue would only make Maple Avenue interchange by itself worse because you are taking two options and consolidating it into one interchange.
This would only worsen traffic. It’s better to have them split and balanced and make improvements with 413 and all the traffic stays the same, it’s just whether they go 213 or 413. The previous project limit did stay out of the historic district but with input from Langhorne Borough and their additional items they wanted the project to address, we did in collaboration with Langhorne Borough; at their request, we extended the project limits to go into the historic district. This was done to address traffic calming concerns and pedestrian access concerns between Flowers Avenue and 213.