Ahead of two public meetings on the project this week, Harris Township supervisors aren’t mincing words when it comes to the three proposed potential routes for PennDOT’s State College Area Connector highway.
“As it stands now, there are no winners with the three alignments that are moving forward,” the Board of Supervisors wrote in a statement on Monday. “Residents will lose their homes and their livelihoods. Farms will be lost. The unique rural character of our area will be forever altered.”
A Planning and Environmental Linkage study conducted by PennDOT in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration evaluated existing and projected transportation needs within a 70-square-mile area in the U.S. Route 322, state Route 45 and state route 144 corridor, where the existing road network and configurations cause safety concerns and lack continuity.
In September, PennDOT narrowed narrowed nine options for the connector route down to three varying routes in the current Route 322 corridor in Potter and Harris townships to create a four-lane highway from Seven Mountains into the State College area. That eliminated alternatives in the Route 144 corridor routes that would have gone over Centre Hall Mountain.
“While we acknowledge the safety issues that exist along the Route 322 corridor, we are opposed to using a limited access super highway to address these concerns,” the Harris Township supervisors wrote. “We fail to see how the proposed super highway will accomplish any of the stated safety goals for this project – lower speeds and safer highway design.”
PennDOT has scheduled public meetings for 5 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at Mount Nittany Middle School that will include a presentation with updates on data collection and current recommendations as well as a question-and-answer period with the audience.
At a joint meeting of Harris and Potter township supervisors last month, residents voiced concerns about how the proposed routes could damage their property values, force them to sell their homes and create additional safety problems.
PennDOT’s study found that the recommended routes would “minimize” residential and business relocations. But representatives of the agricultural community say family-owned farms in the corridor are at risk of being bisected or lost entirely.
“We urge PennDOT to reconsider the design of this roadway. Instead of a limited access super highway, we urge you to design a context sensitive roadway,” Harris Township supervisors wrote. “To us, that means a four-lane divided highway with minimal medians, roundabouts or other left hand turn alternatives and, most importantly, a reduced speed limit through the corridor.”
They pointed to the Route 41 project in Chester County, where instead of previous plans for a limited-access four-lane alignment PennDOT is “moving forward with a context sensitive design that incorporates roundabouts and other safety features,” largely in response to community opposition. Route 41 is a 22-mile highway that runs along a two-lane undivided road in largely rural areas, similar to the Route 322 corridor through Potter and Harris townships.
“If roundabouts and context sensitive design can be used in other parts of Pennsylvania, why is it not being considered here?” the supervisors wrote.
They also questioned why the Centre Region’s Climate Action Goals and Pennsylvania’s Climate Action Plan were not considered in the PEL study but instead will be used as part of the environmental review for the project, calling it “flawed and contrary to good planning,” to not consider them now.
The PEL study is a multi-step process and he first of five phases of advancing a transportation project. After the study is finalized, it will be followed by preliminary engineering and environmental studies, final engineering design, right-of-way acquisition and construction.
The supervisors wrote that the study should also account for other projects in the state that will affect truck traffic through Centre County — like the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway in Snyder Northumberland and Union counties— and questioned how impacts to residents, businesses and agriculture will be weighted in PennDOT’s decision-making.
“Greater transparency is needed to improve the public’s confidence in the state’s ability to plan and build the appropriate roadway for our area,” the supervisors wrote.
Construction on the project — which has current estimated costs ranging from $432 million to $517 million — would not expected to begin until at least 2028 and would take about six years to complete.
But community members need more answers long before then, according to the Harris Township supervisors.
“We urge PennDOT to consider the residents, businesses and farmers along this corridor who now must live in limbo while the project proceeds to environmental review. These residents are unable to make decisions about their homes, businesses and farms until PennDOT makes a decision on the roadway alignment,” they wrote. “Property values are being impacted while PennDOT makes everyone play a waiting game. For the good of our community, we urge you to be transparent, to communicate with impacted residents and to move forward in a timely fashion.”
