The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has finalized the schedule for two upcoming public meetings on the on the State College Area Connector Planning and Environmental Linkage (PEL) Study in southern Centre County.
Open house meetings will be held from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19 and Thursday, Oct. 20 at Mount Nittany Middle School, 656 Brandywine Drive.
Meetings will include plans displays, a PennDOT PowerPoint presentation at 6:15 p.m. and question-and-answer period with the audience. Those who wish to comment or ask questions during the Q&A after the formal presentation will be asked to fill out speaker cards, which will be available at the meeting. Individuals who need communication accommodations or an interpreter should contact PennDOT’s District 2 office in advance at (814) 765-0423.
PennDOT will provide an update on the data collection efforts, traffic analyses and the current recommended alternatives.
The purpose of the PEL study, conducted by PennDOT in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration, was 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.
In September, PennDOT narrowed narrowed nine options for the connector route down to three varying routes in the current Route 322 corridor in Potter and Harris townships. That eliminated alternatives in the Route 144 corridor routes that would have gone over Centre Hall Mountain.
PennDOT studies concluded that all of the Route 322 options would cut truck traffic on local road networks by 72% and total traffic on local roads by 53%, while Route 144 options would only cut truck traffic by 56% and total traffic by 43%.
The 322 corridor routes have been met with concerns and opposition by some residents. Some expect that, given the paths of the recommended routes, they could be forced to sell their homes or at best see their properties decrease in value. A potential connector between Route 45 and Route 322 has raised worries about safety issues, pollution, damage to residential areas and Route 45 being ill-equipped to handle increased traffic.
PennDOT’s study found that the recommended routes would “minimize” residential and business relocations. But representatives of the agricultural community say family-owned farms in the corridor are at risk of being bisected or lost entirely.
“Centre County is home to prime farmland, and some of these proposals have not taken that fact into consideration,” Dave Fetterolf, Centre County Farm Bureau President, said earlier this year. “We understand the idea behind trying to avoid disrupting businesses when planning this route, but the fact that these farms are not being considered as agricultural businesses is unacceptable.”
“If the existing Route 322 is expanded along the edges of some of these farms, the impact would be much more manageable,” CCFB Vice President Dan Kniffen added. “But to split farms in half with a new highway means the end of those farms, period.”
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.
According to information provide by PennDOT in advance of the upcoming meetings, the total estimated cost of the project falls between $432 million and $517 million. The options vary as each makes its way through the Route 322 corridor.
The PEL study is a multi-step process and he 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 would not expected to begin until at least 2028 and would take about six years to complete.
