The following is a dramatization of a conversation that probably took place about a decade ago between top PennDOT District 5 executive and an engineer concerning the West Shore Bypass reconstruction project
District 5 Executive (DE): “Lou, I’m going to give you the Route 422 West Shore reconstruction.”
Engineer: “Aw, come on, Bill. Can’t I have the Route 222 northern section?”
DE: “I gave 222 to Ted. He just came back from a national conference where the DOTs stressed more roundabouts, less traffic signals.”
Engineer: “I had this idea for a buggy lane. Oh well. So, what’s all included with the West Shore?”
DE: “About 5 miles of Route 422 between the Route 12 interchange and Interstate 176. Widening, reconfiguring the Penn and Lancaster avenue interchanges and…”
Engineer: “Hold on, Bill. Isn’t the Lancaster interchange the one with those left-hand exits and on-ramps?”
DE: “Yup. The new design has to eliminate the left-hand ramps. Your job is to figure out how to do it. Also — and this is coming from Harrisburg — you have to make the Penn interchange safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, which means the cloverleaf design is out.”
Engineer: “I hope you have $400 million.”
DE: “Let me worry about getting the funding. Just start putting lines on paper.”
Engineer: “You realize there’s no way we can completely shut down either the Penn or Lancaster interchanges for the reconstruction, right?”
DE: “I do. To some extent, we’re gonna need to design it in a way that we can keep traffic moving throughout. It’ll probably have to be done in phases within phases.”
Engineer: “That’ll take at least five years.”
DE: “Probably six, and more if you include replacing one of the river bridges on the eastern end and one of the railroad overpasses near the Buttonwood Street Bridge. But we’ll probably need to split that off into Phase 2 of the overall project.”
Engineer: “Isn’t the Penn Street Bridge about to get a major overhaul?”
DE: “Yup. Way overdue. Can’t put it off any longer. Chunks are falling from the arches onto the RACC parking lot.”
Engineer: “So if I’m to ditch the Penn Avenue cloverleaf design, I may need to touch that bridge not too many years down the road.”
DE: “Do what you need to do, Lou. If you have to rebuild part of the rebuilt bridge to get rid of the obsolete cloverleaf, then that’s what you need to do.”
Engineer: “Anything else?”
DE: “That’s it for now. I have a conference call with Harrisburg. This is really preliminary, but there’s high-up discussions on imposing tolling on some of the interstate bridges such as the I-78 Lenhartsville span to provide a source of revenue for major bridge projects.”
Engineer: “That’ll never see the light of day.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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