The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will hold two upcoming meetings for the public to hear the latest updates on the State College Area Connector Planning and Environmental Linkage (PEL) Study in southern Centre County.
Open house meetings are scheduled for 3 to 8 p.m. on April 5 at Calvary Church, 150 Harvest Fields Drive in Boalsburg, and 3 to 8 p.m. on April 6 at the Centre Hall Fire Station, 134 N. Whitmer Ave., Centre Hall.
PennDOT will provide an update on the data collection efforts, traffic analyses and build alternative corridor refinements since the last public meetings were held in September.
Information presented will be identical on each date and attendees can go to either open house at any point within the posted hours. Updated information on the study will be available at PennDOT’s SCAC website.
The purpose of the PEL study is to identify existing and projected transportation needs within a 70-square-mile area in the U.S. Route 322, state Route 45 and state route 144 corridor, where the existing road network and configurations cause safety concerns and lack continuity.
The study aims to identify a range of alternatives that would reduce congestion, improve mobility, safety and continuity and support regional land use goals.
Efforts to connect Route 322 at Seven Mountains and southern Centre County with a four-lane highway date back nearly two decades, but the project was scrubbed in 2004 when funding was pulled. In 2019, Gov. Tom Wolf announced the state’s commitment to finally move the project forward, with an estimated cost of about $670 million.
With the completion of the four-lane realignment of U.S. 322 at Potters Mills Gap last year, the connector would complete a four-lane highway from the State College area to Harrisburg.
As of last fall, nine alternatives identified in the initial study includes upgrading the existing 13-mile stretch of 322 to Boalsburg and new alignments in the 322 and 144 corridors.
Harris Township’s Board of Supervisors said in a statement last fall that they did not support an alignment that would bring the new road through Boalsburg because it would remove all of the township’s industrial zoned property, with no other location that could be rezoned industrial to accommodate relocation of impacted businesses, according to the supervisors.
They also said a significant amount of the traffic is destined for I-99 and I-80 and an alternative along the Route 144 corridor would provide the most direct route.
The PEL study is a multi-step process and is expected to be completed this spring.
It’s the first of five phases of advancing a transportation project. After the study is finalized, it will be followed by preliminary engineering and environmental studies, final engineering design, right-of-way acquisition and construction.
Construction is not expected to begin until at least 2027 and will take several years to complete.
