Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Project expected to reduce big-rig traffic
NEW GARDEN >> Besides the lack of parking, the biggest quality-of-life concern in Kennett Square and in Avondale is big rigs rolling through town. They cause the roads to wear prematurely, they are loud, and some houses nearby shake when the trucks roll through.
Many of the tractor-trailers are either coming from or going to many of the region’s booming mushroom businesses, which operate year-round. At Manfredi Mushroom Inc., the largest cold food distribution center in the state, big trucks deliver to locations in Florida, Texas and Colorado every day.
Since the trucks use the Route 1 bypass to get to the mushroom houses, the solution is for them to use the Newark Road exit, and take that south to Old Baltimore Pike. That would instantly solve the big truck problem in both towns.
But the intersection simply can’t accommodate the big rigs, due to a sharp S-curve and steep
decline leading down to Old Baltimore Pike. In fact, the Southern Chester County Planning Commission recently named the intersection the most impeded intersection in Chester County.
“The Newark Road and Old Baltimore Pike intersection is clearly the worst intersection in Chester County,” said state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19, who has been working with state and local officials to solve the problem.
Congested intersection
The traffic around the intersection gets congested, especially during morning and afternoon rush hours. Vehicles sometimes must wait through three traffic turns. And there are no turning lanes.
Newark Road is posted at 25 mph, and it draws an average of 7,700 vehicles per day, nine percent of which are trucks, according to the latest traffic survey there. And Old Baltimore Pike, with a posted speed limit of 35 mph, draws 11,500 vehicles per day, 13 percent of which are tractor-trailers.
But improvement at that intersection aren’t even on PennDOT’s (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) 12-year plan. And New Garden officials want to make sure that the mushroom businesses stay where they are, and don’t relocate due to the frustrations of transportation issues.
“(Manfredi’s) is booming, and we are glad they are here and we don’t want them to go anywhere else,” said Tony Scheivert, New Garden township manager. “We want them to expand in New Garden, and that intersection is absolutely vital to their expansion.”
Said Dinniman: “Companies along Old Baltimore Pike provide hundreds of jobs, and the quality of life is affected by the increasing number of trucks.”
Unwilling to wait for PennDOT to improve the intersection, local officials – backed by local lawmakers – are taking matters into their own hands.
$6.5 million cost
Improving the intersection would cost $6.5 million, with $556,000 targeted for engineering and permitting.
New Garden has applied for a $3 million multi-modal grant. Scheivert said township supervisors are committed to coming up with an additional $3.5 million.
“We will know sometime this year,” Scheivert said. “There is a lot of engineering that has to go into this project, and we may need to purchase property around that intersection to make it work.”
Included in the cost is $750,000 for right-of-way acquisitions. The township already owns property on the northwest side of the intersection.
Funding on New Garden’s end could be made possible when the sale of the township’s sewer system to Aqua Pennsylvania Wastewater, Inc. for $29.5 million is finalized. The sale is expected to happen shortly. About $5 million of those funds are set aside for construction of a new police complex.
Lawmakers involved
Over the past few months, there have been
meetings at Manfredi Cold Storage, that included Dinniman, state Rep. John Lawrence, R-13, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, Kennett Square Mayor Matt Fetick and Penn Township Supervisor Curtis Mason. The officials are so committed to making the intersection project a reality that they are pursuing a public-private partnership even if grant funding isn’t forthcoming.
“We’re putting together a public-private partnership to resolve this,” Dinniman said. “We just have to have a quick way to fix this intersection. This is going on the fast track, and it means everyone will have to come to the plate, because this is in the economic interest of the region.”
Private funding?
Frank Manfredi, owner of Manfredi Mushroom Inc., said he would be willing to participate in private funding for the intersection, because the issue is so vital to his business.
“The amount of traffic on Old Baltimore Pike in front of our facility has more than doubled,” Manfredi said. “We dumped a half-million dollars into the Chambers Road-Old Baltimore Pike intersection, and we are willing to participate in anything that makes (Newark Road and Old Baltimore Pike) intersection safer. It would stop the lion’s share of our trucks coming through Kennett Square. We can see the benefit of it.”
Dinniman said improving the intersection is more than a quality-of-life issue.
“This is a public-safety issue,” Dinniman said. “How do you get a fire engine or an ambulance through that intersection when it is all packed up? We need to get the state, county, the township and the private sector involved.”
Supervisors are serious
Since 2006, New Garden Township has invested more than $400,000 in studies, conceptual engineering, and right-of-way acquisition to advance improvements at the intersection of Baltimore Pike and Newark Road. New Garden Township applied for and received a $200,000 Pennsylvania Community Transportation Initiative Grant from PennDOT to complete the Baltimore Pike Corridor Study. Supervisors hired McMahon Associates, Inc. to provide transportation engineering services, including topographic survey, preliminary engineering, right-of-way coordination, and cost estimating for the intersection improvements.
Scope of work
The work to be done at the intersection includes:
• Providing dedicated left-turn lanes on all four approaches, as well as a right-turn lane from northbound Newark Road to eastbound Baltimore Pike.
• Widen turning radii to accommodate trucks and larger vehicles.
• Realign the northern leg of Newark Road at Baltimore Pike.
• Upgrade and modernize the traffic signal, including pedestrian signals and emergency preemption.
• Access management enhancements and driveway adjustments for homes and businesses.
• Provide new sidewalk connections and decorative crosswalks with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)-compliant curb ramps.
Manfredi, who has lived in Kennett Square for 60 years, said if his trucks can use the Newark Road intersection, it will greatly reduce truck traffic in Kennett Square and Avondale, it will save his drivers about a half-hour per trip, and his trucks will burn three gallons less per trip, helping the environment.
Fetick said fixing the intersection will get many big rigs off the streets of Kennett Square.
“Everyone agrees we need to reduce truck traffic in town,” Fetick said. “One of the best ways to do that is to fix the Newark Road and Old Baltimore Pike intersection. There is a big push right now. This is not just talk. We will have consistent meetings. We are really, really focused on this.”