CFBA gets traffic plan updates

Posted by Rich Schwartzman on June 3, 2016

Mark Eisenhardt, vice president of The Henderson Group, explains the plan for the Hillman Drive extension, the final leg of the loop road around the intersection of Routes 1 and 202.

***UPDATE: The June Planning Commission meeting that had the loop road on its agenda was postponed. The new date is Monday, June 13 at 7 p.m. End UPDATE***

Members of the Chadds Ford Business Association were updated on plans for both the proposed Hillman Drive extension and the Route 926 Bridge project during their June 2 lunch meeting held at the Pennsbury Township municipal building.

Frank Eells, an engineer with Gannett Fleming, spoke about the bridge project, which is supposed to start early next year, and Mark Eisenhardt, vice president of The Henderson Group, spoke about the Hillman Drive extension, which is also known as the loop road.

Eisenhardt said talks about the loop road system around the intersection of Routes 1 and 202 have been going on since Henderson bought the properties on the Chadds Ford side of Route 202 almost 30 years ago. Since then, three legs of the project — State Farm Drive, Brandywine Drive and Applied Bank Boulevard — have already been built. All that’s remaining is the leg through the Henderson-owned Chadds Ford Business Campus.

That final portion of the road would extend Hillman Drive from its current intersection with Route 202, through the business campus, then up to Route 1 across from Hannums Harley Davidson at Brandywine Drive.

Henderson is willing to build the road “on our nickel,” Eisenhardt told the business crowd, instead of the project’s being paid by taxpayer dollars if PennDOT did the work. He added that PennDOT already has the project funded for 2018.

Bill Bunch of William Bunch Auction and Appraisal said he likes Henderson’s approach.

“Henderson is more sensitive to community needs than PennDOT, at least in my opinion,” Bunch said.

According to the plans, residents of Painters Crossing Condominiums would access the extension through a private driveway that Henderson would build. That driveway would take motorists around one of Henderson’s buildings and then connect with Evergreen Place, where they would turn left to get to the loop.

Because Evergreen Place is the only point of ingress and egress for residents of the Estates at Chadds Ford, a roundabout would be built to slow traffic and prevent large truck traffic.

“It [the roundabout] would make it a nightmare for a truck,” Eisenhardt said.

The intersection with Route 202 would be re-striped so that there would be dedicated lanes for left turns, right turns and through traffic. The intersection of Route 1 and Dickinson Drive would also be changed, according to the proposal.

A pork chop-shaped island would be installed so that drivers could no longer turn left onto Route 1 from Dickinson, making that area safer.

When the township will make a decision is unclear. The township Planning Commission is scheduled to hear the plan again on June 8. It’s up to the commission to give supervisors a recommendation on whether or not to approve the project. Henderson would then go before the Board of Supervisors for approval once the Planning Commission makes its decision.

Eells said the Route 926 Bridge project is scheduled to begin early next year and take about a year, but detours would only be about six months, from March until Labor Day.

“There will be considerable penalties if the contractor doesn’t complete the project on time,” he said.

The project has been planned since 1999 to reduce the number of times flooding closes the approaches to the span over the Brandywine Creek.

Eells explained that while the bridge stays above water, it’s the approaches on either side that flood. The plan calls for raising the approaches to the bridge by about eight feet.

He added that had the road been built according to the proposed plan, flooding there would have only occurred three times since 1999, instead of the multiple times it has flooded.

Detours would take drivers around the area using Routes 52, 202 and 1.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.