NANTICOKE -- The head of PennDOT insists a new highway complete with six new roundabouts will make driving safer in the Nanticoke area.
State officials took Newswatch 16 on a tour of work being done on the new South Valley Parkway Thursday.
The parkway, along with six new roundabouts, is being built near Middle Road in Nanticoke. The head of PennDOT said the main driving force behind this multi-million dollar project is safety.
Road closures and detours are expected for parts of Nanticoke and Hanover Township over the next couple years, as crews build the new $83 million road project.
Justin Elias has lived on Middle Road his whole life. He always finds traffic in the area to slow down his commute.
"It takes like 10 minutes sometimes to pull out of the driveway when I'm going to work," Elias said.
Congestion on Middle Road is exactly why his friend moved away from it.
"It's real busy, definitely during the school year with all the local commutes, with LCCC," said Kyle Rummert.
Luzerne County Community College is a commuter school and students often tie up traffic on Middle Road, but PennDOT says when the South Valley Parkway is built it will connect Hanover Township with Nanticoke and take about 6,000 vehicles off Middle Road.
"It will relieve congestion and it will help spur regional economic development in this area," said PennDOT Secretary Leslie Richards.
At a news conference, PennDOT and local elected officials gave Newswatch 16 a tour of where the parkway is being built.
"It will open up thousands of acres, thousands of acres of land for commercial and industrial development," said State Senator John Yudichak, (D) 14th District.
But some businesses in the area, like the Cocoa Hut at Middle Road and Espy Street, have taken a beating since construction for the projects began a few months ago.
"It's taking away a lot of business," said Rachel Briggs, an employee at the Cocoa Hut.
Middle Road is not only closed right in front of the Cocoa Hut, but traffic has been diverted right through the Cocoa Hut's parking lot.
SIX ROUNDABOUTS
The six roundabouts are designed to improve traffic flow and safety along Middle Road.
Typical intersections can result in head-on or side collisions and even deaths, but Secretary Richards says the biggest damage from a crash in a roundabout is usually just losing a sideview mirror.
“We always want to work towards zero fatalities on our roadways, and roundabouts are a huge asset in doing that,” she said.
But the airport roundabouts had problems.
Newswatch 16 found it was too narrow for truckers to get through, and drivers had difficulty navigating all the signs, and we weren't alone. The Sunday Times published a front page article on the controversy just last week. We showed the paper to Richards, but even with all the coverage, the head of PennDOT says she hasn't heard complaints about the roundabouts in Avoca.
“I'm not familiar with that specific issue,” she said.
But Geoff Gribble is. He's a project manager with the Nanticoke roundabouts. He's even driven through the airport roundabouts. We asked him the same question: Can drivers expect the same thing from these roundabouts?
“No,” he said. “These are all set up with auto-turn. It's a software to size up the turns correctly and make sure the long 53-foot trailers can navigate through the curve of the roundabout.”
The project is expected to be completed in 2019.