Next step scheduled for 2020
No date for when third and final phase of Route 309 connector will be built
The timeframe has been moved up for the next part of the connector route between Route 309 and Sumneytown Pike at the Kulpsville entrance to the turnpike.
“The project was scheduled to begin in 2022 and we have been able to move it up to 2020,” Sibty Hasan, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation project manager, said during an Oct. 19 open house held in the Souderton Area High School cafeteria.
The first phase, which goes along Wambold Road from Sumneytown Pike to Allentown Road, was finished in 2012.
The next phase, which is the part now scheduled to begin construction in 2020 and to be completed in 2023, will extend the connector to Township Line Road on the Franconia/Hatfield border, ending at Souderton-Hatfield Pike.
Sound walls are planned to be installed in a part of that section.
“Preliminarily, it’s between Elroy (Road) and Cowpath (Road) on both sides,” said Kristian Bellotti, of the McCormick Taylor engineering firm.
The first construction work on the second phase will be between Allentown Road and Cowpath Road, he said.
“There’ll be three different detours at different times during the project,” said Nick D’Angelo, a traffic engineer with McCormick Taylor.
There will be detours for less than half the time the work is being done, though, said Erik Schmidt, another McCormick/Taylor traffic engineer.
That’s because most of the second phase is not built along existing roadway, Hasan said.
“It is mostly new-built,” he said. “That’s why we’re able to do it with so little detour.”
When there are detours, it will only be in small sections, he said.
The portion from Allentown Road to Cowpath Road will be new construction and the Township Line Road portion between Cowpath Road and Souderton-Hatfield Pike is currently a one-lane dirt road, he said.
PennDOT has previously put the pricetag for the remaining parts of the connector at about $100 million, including $38.1 million for phase 2 and $60.7 million for the final section between Souderton-Hatfield Pike and Route 309.
Funding is in place for phase 2, but the final phase is not yet funded, Hasan said.
That final section is still in the early planning stages, he said. There is no schedule at this point for when the final phase will be done, he said, but it’s estimated that construction could begin in 2025.
When the second phase is done, it will give a connection between Sumneytown Pike and Township Line Road, with existing two lane portions of Township Line Road continuing to Route 309.
That doesn’t mean the existing Township Line Road in that section can be the connector route, though, Hasan said.
“It won’t be able to handle that traffic volume,” he said, “definitely not.”