I moved to Allentown in 2002. Driving to work on my first day at Kutztown University, stuck behind a trash truck for several miles of two-lane no-passing zone on US 222 until the Kutztown bypass, I wondered, through the inescapable stench, what I had gotten myself into. Had I not found an alternative route that avoided US 222 on my commute, I probably would have moved to avoid it.
On October 1, PennDOT officials appeared at Fleetwood High School to tout their solution to US 222 congestion: roundabouts. It is preposterous to characterize any plan or proposal regarding US 222 that doesn’t incorporate an upgrade of all present 2-lane sections between Reading and Allentown to 4-lane limited access highways as a solution. But PennDOT planners are content to propose shortsighted solutions that disregard the obvious need for a massive upgrade of this road.
In the most recent transportation study by the Lehigh Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization, found at http://www.dot.state.pa.us/typ/index_files/LehighValley.htm, US 222 is not even designated a major corridor, a term that describes a road considered vital to a region. Reading planners do at least recognize this, in their report found at http://www.dot.state.pa.us/typ/index_files/DVRPC.htm but they appear to also be unmindful of the need to upgrade unimproved portions of US 222, as their planning document merely lists the several worst intersections on the 2-lane Berks County portion of US 222 for roundabouts, as do proposals in Lehigh County.
Everything about the two lane stretches of US 222 between Reading and Allentown is a debacle.
What is of greatest concern is not that there aren’t plans on the drawing board to upgrade this road to a 4-lane limited access highway; it is that people who should know better don’t see the necessity. Every dollar spent on US 222 before a complete plan to upgrade it to the 4-lane highway it should have been transformed to decades ago is akin to applying a Band-Aid where a tourniquet is called for. That every political and transportation official in our region doesn’t have the upgrade of all 2-lane sections of US 222 in Berks and Lehigh counties as their top priority is unconscionable. Not only is this road critical to the region’s ability to foster and maintain economic growth, thousands of people are inconvenienced and endangered daily on this obsolete, overcrowded, and overused road.
This has gone on long enough. Funds are now available via the new gas tax. Contact your representatives and tell them that you will not accept anything less than an expedited plan to upgrade US 222. If you drive this quagmire daily and don’t act, then don’t complain.
Let’s have an actual permanent solution. Let’s bring US 222 into the 21st century.
Daniel Spiegel, Allentown resident.
