November 22, 2016

With increased traffic expected for the upcoming Thanksgiving travel period, PennDOT and Pennsylvania State Police outlined measures they will take and tools available to drivers to make holiday travel as safe and smooth as possible.

Thanksgiving travelers are encouraged to visit the “Historic Holiday Traffic” page at www.511PA.com, which allows users to see how traffic speeds on the Wednesday before and Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2014 and 2015 compare to traffic conditions during a typical, non-holiday week. Users can choose their region and view an hour-by-hour, color-coded visual of traffic speeds to help them decide the best times to travel during the holiday. 511PA also offers real-time, traffic speed information for roughly 2,900 highway miles of roadways throughout the state, a PennDOT press release said.

“I encourage all motorists to use 511PA, not only for their holiday travels, but also throughout the winter season,” PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards said in the release. “From traffic speeds and cameras to plow tracking, the site and mobile applications are great resources to help make travel decisions.”

PennDOT traffic management staff have analyzed this holiday data and identified locations and time frames where congestion typically increases dramatically during the holiday and will take steps to try to alleviate congestion and improve safety. The department will also partner with police for increased, strategic enforcement of speed and impaired driving laws. Travel data was also shared with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency for distribution to 9-1-1 centers so staff is aware of and can plan for peak travel times, when call volume could increase, the release said.

“We’re always looking for new ways to use our resources to improve our operations and the public’s mobility,” Richards said in the release. “These efforts are more examples of how we’re striving to embody the governor’s ‘Government That Works’ agenda every day.”

To attempt to ease congestion, the department will use highway advisory radio messages and electronic message boards to encourage travelers to reroute onto U.S. 22 westbound, which typically has excess capacity, and it will partner with state police on concentrated traffic enforcement near this area and to actively clear disabled vehicles from shoulders.

In the Philadelphia region, staff identified I-95 in Delaware County and the Schuylkill Expressway as target areas and will have a trooper stationed in the regional traffic management center from Thursday through Sunday for faster communications to field personnel for quick incident and shoulder clearance, and increase the hours that PennDOT’s State Farm Safety Patrol will be on duty.

To further increase traffic-data availability for traffic management staff, PennDOT has created a portal through which staff can receive prioritized reports from Waze, a real-time crowd-sourced navigation app through which drivers share road conditions. As a member of the Waze Connected Citizens Program, the department can receive incident or roadway concern alerts faster and respond more quickly if necessary.

PennDOT will also remove lane restrictions and suspend construction projects wherever possible through the holiday period. Motorists can see remaining construction projects at www.511PA.com before they travel. The public can use the free 511PA to check conditions on nearly 40,000 roadway miles in Pennsylvania.

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It’s going to be a happy Thanksgiving for some area conservationists: Bulldozers won’t be tearing up the fields along Beaver Valley Road in Concord Township to make way for new homes because a conservation agreement has been reached that will keep the valley from development.

Full details are not yet available, but the Beaver Valley Preservation Alliance and Save the Valley are reporting that 240 acres in Pennsylvania, adjacent to the First State National Historic Park in Delaware, will be “permanently off limits to development.”

The Beaver Valley Preservation Alliance is crediting the Beaver Valley Conservancy, the Brandywine Conservancy, the Mount Cuba Center and the Conservation Fund for working the agreement with the property owner. It’s been reported that the Conservation Fund will be granted time to raise an estimated $8 million to finalize the deal.

The agreement, when finalized, would end most of a five-year-long controversy surrounding the property belonging to Woodlawn Trustees. Woodlawn was looking to sell the land to developers so it could continue to provide affordable housing in Wilmington, part of Woodlawn’s mission.

While this agreement would preserve 240 acres, another 60 acres could still be developed.

Concord supervisors last year approved a development plan — known as Vineyard Commons — that would have resulted in 160 homes being built on the 240 acres. Anger over what some considered excessive development already had residents calling for a change to the township government.

A group called Concord First gathered signatures in 2014 for a petition that would have asked voters if the township should change from a township of the second class to a township of the first class. The group thought such a change would mean current members of the Board of Supervisors would be ousted.

While the group gathered more than the number of signatures needed, other residents — including Supervisors’ Chairman Dominic Pileggi — challenged the petition in court and the question was kept off the ballot.

Concord First appealed the decision in Commonwealth Court and later to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but supervisors got their own ballot question to the voters, an action that ultimately resulted in Concord’s becoming a home rule township beginning this coming January. Current supervisors will remain in office until their terms expire or they resign.

Following the supervisors’ actions last year, residents Jack Michel, Diana McCarthy and Eileen Mutschler appealed the Vineyard Commons decision. Delaware County Court Judge Michael Green heard the appeal this August and in October remanded the decision to the supervisors.

During the Nov. 1 supervisors’ meeting, Concord’s solicitor Hugh Donaghue said supervisors would work with Woodlawn and the developers in an effort to preserve the valley as open space.

Pileggi announced the night that supervisors approved the plan last year that the township would donate $500,000 to keep the valley open, and Delaware County was offering an additional $250,000.

It remains to be seen what will happen with the other 60 acres. Supervisors denied a lot-line change that developers had applied for, but Judge Charles Burr remanded that decision to the supervisors.

That plan, known as Concord Ventures, calls for the construction of 29 townhouses and 167 apartments. The acreage is next to the 240 acres that will now be preserved.

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.

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