SHOULDER THE LOAD
PennDOT: Let drivers use shoulders to ease traffic crunch on I-476, I-95
Congestion on Interstate 476 may soon be a thing of the past, according to an announcement Friday by PennDOT.
Except, not quite. And not any time soon.
Solutions are coming, however, said state Secretary of Transportation Leslie Richards as she announced analysis and design work to alleviate rush-hour traffic jams in Delaware County.
They’re going to let you drive on the shoulder of the road to speed things up.
But you’ll just have to first wait four years for construction to start.
“Constrained resources are always a problem with all of our projects, but we refuse to allow this to restrict our ability to improve traffic flow here in the region,” Richards said. “We’re counting on part-time shoulder use to alleviate that congestion.”
Dynamic part-time shoulder use, a fancy way of saying that lanes will expand to three-wide using existing space on the shoulder of the two major highways in Delaware County. Using signage, traffic signals, or a combination both, “hard-shoulder running” will allow drivers heading north or south between West Chester Pike and the I-95 interchange to expand to additional lanes during peak travel hours.
Additionally, I-95 South between the I-476 interchange and the Commodore Barry Bridge will also be the subject of the fouryear study to alleviate traffic heading south into Delaware.
Richards said the 4-mile section of I-476 carries an average of 830,000 vehicles a day, while the southbound section of I-95 carries 95,000 vehicles a day.
“There may be areas where those shoulders need to be wider, and there are areas where we might be constrained by geological factors or other issues like right of way,” Richards said.
PennDOT will fork up $8 million for the study and design of shoulder expansion, as well as an undetermined sum from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
She said that the traffic widening efforts would be focused on the most advantageous areas to alleviate congestion, as well as specific times of day to enable the third lane.
“Gov. Wolf insists that his administration deliver on his promise of a ‘government that works’ and addressing mobility goes a long way to achieving that goal,” Richards said.
However, just last month the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed House Bill 453 via a party line vote by the Republican majority. If it had not been shot down in the Senate, 437, it would have cut $125 million from the Public Transportation Trust Fund, Multimodal Transportation Fund, the PA Infrastructure Bank and the Highway Beautification Fund.
State Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, D-161 of Swarthmore, voted no, and said in a statement Friday she is pleased that traffic concerns would be addressed.
“Like many Delaware County residents, I spend too much time sitting in traffic on 476 and I-95,” Krueger-Braneky wrote. “I’m glad that PennDOT is taking action to reduce congestion and alleviate bottlenecks on the Blue Route and Interstate 95.”
“Making sure our roads and bridges are safe is an important function of government, which is why I voted against HB 453 last month.”
The Blue Route was under construction between 1967 and 1991 and came to completion under an agreement with Swarthmore College to slice off a 14-acre piece of the pastoral campus where the expressway shrinks from six lanes to four — two in each direction.
Residents in the area were concerned over an increase of air quality and pollution, but it has been proven that idling cars produce just as much pollution as ones in motion.
“One of the success of hard-shoulder running, in addition to improving traffic flow, is minimizing environmental impact as well as land use issues,” Richards said. “This is exactly the type of tool that could alleviate some of the concerns and some of the conflicts that we’ve had prior.”
Richards said the shoulder expansion, like the overpass over Baltimore Pike, would remaining within the confines of the current construction. Her colleague, Emmanuel “Manny” Anastasiadis, the traffic operations manager for PennDOT District 6-0, said much of I-476 was built with the necessary depth to allow for shoulder running without needing to expand the highway.
“We believe most of the shoulders on I-476 have been built for depth, in which case the expansion is wide enough to accommodate what we’re talking about,” Anastasiadis said. “Again, we have to look at it in detail, but preliminarily looks like we should be able to get this through without too much (construction).”
A focus would be on allowing first responders access to accidents on the highway.
“We could not move and we would never move forward with this if we didn’t move together with our emergency responders and they didn’t feel comfortable with it at any time,” Richards said.
Anastasiadis said PennDOT would be selective in the times of day in which shoulder access was granted to drivers.
“Working with emergency responders, we’re able to select when the shoulder is open or closed,” Anastasiadis said. “There are ways to work with them in real time to deal with incidents based on where they happened and how their response will take place.”
Construction is not set to begin until at least 2021.