Smooth, safe flow of traffic starts with more data
We talk a lot about multimillion-dollar road projects, and as you grind to a halt along Route 22 at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, it’s easy to get fixated on how many of those big-ticket projects will help move vehicles through our transportation network quicker and more efficiently.
It’s why we all check GPS before we hit the road, right? We’ll do anything to avoid traffic. And the 118 road, bridge, trail, transit and pedestrian projects in the draft four-year, $558 million Transportation Improvement Program will certainly improve the efficiency of a Lehigh Valley network that is handling more people and vehicles than ever.
But when it comes to the 2025-2028 Draft TIP, the old cliche “safety first’ surely applies because we are investing a tremendous amount of funding to improve some of the Lehigh Valley’s most crash-prone areas. Route 309 and Tilghman Street is easily one of the region’s most troublesome interchanges with more than 200 accidents from 2018 through 2022 – the most recent year that all crash data has been compiled. Anyone who uses that interchange knows that accelerating from Tilghman into moving traffic on Route 309 is not for the timid. To be fair, virtually all of those accidents are rear end fender-benders created when one driver thinks they can merge into traffic and stops abruptly, to the surprise of the driver behind them. But think about that. It’s an accident virtually every week, and that’s just the ones that have been reported to police. Our planners believe there are many, many more in which police are never called. That’s what can happen when an outdated road design done when that area was surrounded by limited residential and undeveloped farm fields has to service today’s hive of retail, residential and commercial development.
At a total cost of $108 million, that interchange is getting a complete reconstruction, new traffic signals, two new bridges and most importantly, new acceleration and deceleration lanes added to 309. That’s a lot of money, but that’s a lot of crashes, and fully a quarter of them include injuries.
The TIP is marked by several projects in which the investment will go a long way to improve safety. They include:
■ Route 191 and Route 22, Bethlehem Township — This is another interchange with entrance and exit ramps that were engineered in a previous era, so the ramps will be replaced to prevent most of the 99 accidents that have occurred there over five years. The total investment is expected to be $48.6 million, including the $4.4 million in this draft TIP.
■ Route 309 and Center Valley Parkway, Upper Saucon Township — This intersection has been the site of more than 100 crashes in five years, largely because the traffic volume on both roads has exploded in recent years. Development in this area has resulted in more vehicles (by the way, it always does) and this $78.6 million investment — including $57 million in this draft TIP — will separate the roads by creating an interchange with Route 309 bridging over Center Valley Parkway.
■ Hill-to-Hill Bridge, Bethlehem — This is a very historic bridge, the only one of it’s design in the entire world and is in need of rehabilitation. Its current safety record of 88 accidents over five years, will certainly be improved by wider lanes and better pedestrian and bicycle access. The total cost is projected at $98 million, including $56 million in this draft four-year plan.
■ Route 248 Realignment, Bath Borough — This section of West Northampton Street includes a small weight-restricted bridge that is forcing tractor-trailers through a National Register of Historic Places listed district
with neighborhood scale streets that simply weren’t built to handle vehicles that large. This $8.1 million project will replace the bridge and straighten the road, alleviating much of the challenges residents and businesses are dealing with daily.
The TIP is a four-year spending plan for the region’s transportation projects, and it’s updated every two years. Obviously, some projects are so expensive that accumulating the money and doing the design, engineering and construction can stretch across several TIPs.
Projects take time. Center Valley Parkway at Route 309 was started 11 years ago, for example. That is a combination of design and engineering but mostly public money is not available in the quantity that is needed for large projects to move more quickly. We aren’t authorized by the State Legislature to borrow money to advance projects faster. So, many plod along, one foot at a time, until the finish line is reached a decade or more later.
Safety has always been central to transportation planning. But we have more data than ever to determine where the weaknesses are, and how to reduce them. Several years ago, following federal directives, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation instituted transportation performance management with a Performance Measures program. Annually, we set targets for safety measures, specifically designed to develop and implement projects to reduce fatalities and injuries. Each year we determine whether those measures are met and if they aren’t, we take steps to make changes. Since then, PennDOT added new annual Performance Measures for road and bridge conditions, and mostly recently, for congestion management and air quality.
The point is, we have more data — and better data — than ever and we’re using it. Here’s one more statistic that we can all work to change — 41%. That’s the percentage of fatal accidents that are caused by speed in Pennsylvania, the fifth-highest rate in the nation, according to an analysis by Forbes. But it’s also a 12% improvement from a decade ago — one of the biggest improvements nationwide — an indication that the Performance Measures are working.
That means we can all make a dent by doing one thing: Slow down.
I’m as guilty as anyone. Who hasn’t left the office later than expected, or is running a few minutes late to the next appointment? You – or rather I – try to make up that time on the roads. If you do the math, what do you really gain by careening through traffic on a five-mile commute to the next appointment? Two minutes, maybe three? It’s not worth it.
Since taxpayers are doing their part in the form of more than a half-billion worth of safety-improving road investments, we can all do a little more by removing the lead from our right shoe. Matching infrastructure improvements with better driver behavior makes us all more mobile and safer. At the heart of it that’s what we all want.