Brookville schools consider impact of I-80 bridge project

BROOKVILLE — Brookville Area School District Superintendent Dr. Erich May spoke about the upcoming Interstate 80 bridge replacement project and the closures that will affect the district during Monday’s work session.

He said the administrative team met with representative from PennDOT about the project. He shared a power point that detailed the detours, with the Jenks Street detour beginning on June 2024 and lasting through December 2025 and the Richardsville Road detour beginning spring 2025 and ending spring 2028. Jenks Street will be shut down near the area of Cemetery Road, and the detour will entail SR 4003 (Jenks Street), SR 0036 (Allegheny Boulevard), SR 0028 (Main Street), SR 4003 (Valley Street), and will be approximately three miles. Richardsville Road will closed past Pennsylvania Avenue, and the detour will entail SR 4005 (Richardsville Road), SR 0028 (East Main Street), SR 2008, Township Road T-430 (Butler Cemetery Road), and will be approximately 5.3 miles.

May said one of his concerns was the Richardsville Road detour on Butler Cemetery Road, which comes out on Route 28 at a blind spot. He said the traffic there is posted at 50 miles per hour and is not a spot with good visibility for a school bus. He said they will have to continue to apply pressure on PennDOT to put a stoplight there as part of that detour.

He said in one of the initial meetings with PennDOT, he made it clear that Brookville is not set up for significant diversion traffic and he was concerned what it will look like when they actually move lanes.

“I have concerns related to Interstate 80 and regarding diversion traffic in town. I was also talking to them about how contour and elevation matters. On some of the maps, it makes it look real easy. It’s real steep coming in and out of Brookville. I, naturally, have concerns regarding the closure of Jenks Street. I don’t like what that does to this campus. This bridge project will put a hurting on the town and represent a real challenge for the district. We are taking every opportunity to remind the public that this wasn’t our idea to close these roads. I want to assure the board that we are going to try and think outside of the box a little bit,” May said.

He said they will try and reroute some buses in light of the detours. He said right now, Hickory Grove is the transfer station, and they will take