Don’t worry: Route 29 bridge won’t be shut down
This week’s column features a bunch of assorted questions from readers. As usual, the questions have been edited for space and clarity.
Let’s dive in.
Q: I read your article about the bridge closing just south of Emmaus on
Route 29.
Although I am sure that your numbers are correct about the fact that north of Emmaus the traffic is heavier, do you have any concept about how heavily this bridge is utilized? You make it sound like Route 29 is some lazy country road. Trust me, it is not.
Pardon the expression, but this is going to be a “train wreck” for the businesses and particularly the truck traffic that needs to get north of Emmaus (and add to that traffic).
— James Reichart, Emmaus The column didn’t actually say the bridge was going to be shut down for construction, though my vague phrasing certainly made that a safe assumption. That’s on me, and I apologize if I gave anyone ulcers. I deliberately left out the construction strategies for all the projects in last week’s column. Expect to see some of those plans once we get closer to construction.
As for the Route 29 bridge, PennDOT plans to build a new bridge alongside the existing one rather than close the road for construction. This should minimize the traffic interruptions around Emmaus while replacing the span across the busy Norfolk Southern rail line. But even with that, there will be a two-month detour for southbound traffic, PennDOT spokesman Sean Brown said.
As for the description of Route 29, my intention was to differentiate between the busier flow of traffic that uses Route 29 north of Emmaus versus the traffic south of it. Government agencies don’t do traffic counts for spots that close together, but the numbers I do have show the daily traffic on Cedar Crest Boulevard near Devonshire Road is about double the amount of vehicles on Route 29 around Beck Road. I don’t think the figures are THAT dramatically different closer to Emmaus, but my experience driving through here and the best numbers available suggest there is a difference.
Q: I see many articles about Real ID and they always say applicants need an unlaminated Social Security card. It never says what you have to do if your card IS laminated? So what do we do?
— Bruce Sokol
In this case, you probably need to apply for a new Social Security card. The federal government instructs people not to laminate the cards because it interferes with security measures. You can, however, place your card in a plastic sleeve for protection so long as the card can be removed without damaging it.
People who need to replace their Social Security card can apply for a replacement online at www.ssa.gov/myaccount or can visit a Social Security office. The Lehigh Valley has offices in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton. Social Security offices are still operating; they’re not affected by the government shutdown.
Q: It's my understanding that some gas tax revenue gets siphoned away into the state police budget. This isn't for interstate or state highway traffic safety efforts, but to pay for all the free policing that places like Lower Macungie Township get instead of paying for their own local police.
If that's accurate, then PennDOT could be making more improvements if those municipalities chose to have their own departments. Some poor little municipalities have little choice, of course, but some like Lower Macungie could easily fund their own police protection. You can't blame them, but we should call it what it is — welfare.
I'm not anti-state police, but I think the state misuses them for the benefit of greedy residents of municipalities that should (in my opinion) be paying for their police protection.
— Gary Cordner, Macungie This is a good question with a very complicated answer. The short simple answer is the state depends on money that could otherwise pay for road improvements in order to fund state police. But the more complete picture is that if the state were to rearrange the tax system so that funding came from more appropriate sources, the amount of money going to road improvements would likely be the same.
The Legislature uses revenue from registration fees and gas taxes to fund state police, using the logic that troopers patrol state highways, serving an important transportation service. The state pays troopers with cash from other sources using similar logic, like liquor license fees. Fair enough.
What raises a lot of people’s blood pressure is the extent the state relies on transportation sources to fund state police. In the 2018-19 budget, $681 million is being moved out of the Motor License Fund to pay for state police. By comparison, $283.6 million comes from Pennsylvania’s general fund.
To put that figure in perspective, the Route 22 bridge and Fullerton interchange construction currently underway should cost $68.2 million when all is said and done. The state could pay for 10 projects of similar cost with all the money going to state police.
But we need to be able to pay for key services like state police, and it’s not obvious where else the money would come from. Yes, identifying and eliminating waste in state government will help, but it only goes so far.
If state legislators rearranged the various fees and taxes so that appropriate revenue sources fully funded corresponding needs, I think we’d wind up with spending similar to what we’re already seeing. Gas taxes might be lower, but property taxes or earned income taxes would have to be higher to compensate. In practice, this could create new tax burdens on people who can’t afford it.
All that said, I, too, am frustrated to see some wealthy townships relying on state police. But if legislators were interested in stopping the practice, they would have adopted the $25 per capita fee Gov. Tom Wolf wants to charge municipalities lacking their own police departments. The Legislature ignored similar requests from former Gov. Tom Ridge, showing that this isn’t some partisan plot.