BELLEFONTE — Located in front of the county courthouse, where Allegheny and High streets cross, the Bellefonte Diamond lies right in the heart of town. Due to the safety issues, the Diamond has also seen some tragedies recently, as a handful of significant pedestrian-motor vehicle accidents have resulted in serious injuries and even the death of a woman crossing in the street last July.
Temporary safety measures are being taken by borough officials as plans are to install plastic curbing and delineators around the Diamond in August. Those officials are also now considering some long-term plans to help make the intersection even safer.
On Aug. 2, borough council heard two re-design concepts from Jason Stimmel, a senior engineer from Pennoni Associates, who worked with the borough’s streets committee to develop a plan for the safety issues.
Council didn’t take action on the plan, but agreed to hold a future public hearing to gather input concerning the proposal before a board vote would be taken. Two public hearings, one in the evening and during day-time hours, will be announced at a later date.
The two options are similar in some aspects. Both take public parking spaces away. Both add green space to the Diamond.
But they differ drastically from there.
One option would change the Diamond design slightly, keeping the current two-way stop sign pattern, while the other would change the footprint completely with an added roundabout.
Stimmel called option one the “bulb-out option,” saying “It is basically doing curb bulb-outs to help decrease and minimize the amount of space that pedestrians have to cross in this intersection because it is a very wide intersection.”
The bulb-outs, which would be added to the current parking spaces where High Street widens at the intersection, would also narrow the road and help calm traffic.
This option would also include relocating the High Street crosswalk in the western direction, lining it adjacently to the YMCA driveway.
“The idea would be to get as much space from the main intersection to give drivers more of a heads up about that crosswalk and to increase visualizations,” Stimmel said.
The pedestrian crosswalk through the Y-configuration in the intersection would stay, but Stimmel said it could be eliminated in the future if deemed necessary.
The second option, or the roundabout option, would not only alter traffic and pedestrian patterns, but also eliminate the crosswalk near the YMCA.
“The benefit here is that you are substantially reducing the number of conflicts that a pedestrian would encounter, making them efficiently cross one lane each time to cross any of the streets,” Stimmel said.
If PennDOT would require the roundabout to be accessible to tractor-trailers, it would be constructed in a way to allow larger vehicles to make the difficult turn. Buses and shipping trucks should have no issues navigating the roundabout, Stimmel said.
The project price tag for the roundabout option would be about $1 million, he said, and the first option would weigh in at about $400,000. Stimmel noted the project would be funded through grant money.
“In terms of addressing the safety, I think both of these are fairly valid options,” he said.
This story appears in the Aug. 5-11 edition of the Centre County Gazette.
