Freemansburg Avenue at Washington Street
BETHLEHEM TOWNSHIP
Description: A four-way intersection where Washington Street traffic has a stop sign. There’s a marked pedestrian crossing on Freemansburg and two on either end of Washington. This is a residential area about a mile away from a shopping district at the Route 33 interchange.
Speed limit: 35 mph. Speed limit signs are posted in both directions before this intersection, and another is posted at the corner for eastbound traffic.
As far as the sheer number of people speeding, this was the worst location I visited. I counted 18 vehicles going 10 mph or more over the speed limit, and it felt like more flew by every time I stopped to take notes. The worst was a commercial van going 57 mph, but I clocked another three vehicles doing at least 50. A cement truck doing 45 mph toward Bethlehem deserves special notice, too.
Freemansburg Avenue is wider and has a higher speed limit closer to the Route 33 interchange, but this corner is far enough away that westbound drivers should have slowed down by now. Eastbound traffic had no excuse at all for speeding, considering they just left a construction zone off a residential area.
The locals are clearly aware of the speeding problem. Two homes just off the corner on Washington Street had signs hanging off the mailboxes reading “Senior Crossing.” One neighbor, Woody Fehnel, noticed me with the speed gun and deduced who I was. Mostly.
“You’re that Tom Bortell guy, aren’t you?” he said. Close enough.
Fehnel has installed a large decorative rock in his front yard because he was worried someone would hit his home. His precaution paid off. Someone hit the rock hard enough to move it; Fehnel has since installed an I-beam next to it as an extra precaution.
People are constantly whizzing through, particularly during the evening rush hour and around 8 p.m., he said. He’s particularly frustrated by the seemingly haphazard speed limits and traffic control devices set through the township. Emrick Boulevard, a nearby road that cuts through a large industrial and office district, is filled with stop signs and has a 25 mph speed limit. But residential Freemansburg Avenue has little of that.
“It makes no sense,” he told me.