If you are among the 100,000 motorists that travel Route 22 through the СŷƵ on a daily basis and have heard about future improvements, there’s a good chance you were wondering when they might be coming — especially while sitting in stop-and-go traffic near Airport Road or Cedar Crest Boulevard.
Like any major road project, updating the СŷƵ Thruway is a long process even before the first shovel hits the dirt. Part of the plan is to widen Route 22 to six lanes from 15th Street to Airport Road, but construction is not expected to start until at least 2029.
Funding for the improvements still has to be secured before anything can be done. And like anything that requires taxpayer funding, there are plenty of data reports and applications that need to be made. In other words, lots of important paperwork to make sure everything is in place before any construction starts.
СŷƵ recently talked to Becky Bradley, executive director of the СŷƵ Planning Commission, about the latest updates to the project.
A new plan
The LVPC for consulting services to help come up with the U.S. Route 22: Mobility, Safety & Congestion Management Plan — also known as the “What to do with 22 Plan.” It will be a vastly updated version of published in 1999.
It will look at the 23-mile stretch from the split with Interstate 78 in Upper Macungie Township to the New Jersey state line at Easton.
Bradley said it’s necessary for the update to know where to put the “puzzle pieces” and prevent any unnecessary delays.
“There’s not billions of dollars sitting around to do everything all at once,” she said. “Can you imagine if 22 was being torn up for 10 years straight? That’s not acceptable. So we have to have a very well-thought out, tailored, financially achievable strategy.”
The study is being funded by a $1 million grant from PennDOT that was secured by state Sen. Nick Miller, D-Lehigh. It will look at congestion relief, safety, mobility, environmental quality and economic growth.
Bids are being accepted through Oct. 10 with work on the report to begin in December and be completed by December 2026.
Bradley called the older plan “not really strategic.” It lists several potential improvements to the highway that she described as a “choose your own adventure” book.
“The region changes so much that we actually need a strategy for things like maintenance, operations, all of those sorts of things and you can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s going to cost a billion dollars to do X, Y and Z,’ ” she said.
“Obviously we don’t have that kind of money, so we need to have more targeted strategies, similar to what we did with the breakout projects to replace the Lehigh River Bridge or the road between Fullerton and the Airport Road interchanges.”
What type of road is Route 22?
One thing that may affect renovating Route 22 is a recently approved update to the functional classification system for all of the region’s highways by the СŷƵ Transportation Study.
Bradley said it’s a routine task that happens about every 10 years. The roads are rated by traffic volume ranges put out by the Federal Highway Administration. These classifications can affect things from whether a road gets a traffic light or a higher speed limit, or how much federal or state funding for improvements it’s eligible for. More than 30 roads in the Valley will also see a rise in classification.
It was during the process that it was found that Route 22’s increased traffic count has made it eligible for a promotion to interstate highway status. That status will be taken into consideration in the upcoming management plan.
“We’re going to forward all those things over, but the interstate component will take much longer,” Bradley said. “It’s easier to upgrade the status of a local road, than it is to increase the designation of something that is now considered critical to national security.”
That’s because interstate highways are eligible for additional government funding. However, it will require more federal scrutiny, Bradley said, to make sure taxpayer money is being spent appropriately.
Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com.
