HERMITAGE There's a new twist in works for road

No matter what plan is devised, it will be at least 2006 before any work is done.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- It's taken local officials 15 years of lobbying, but the state is finally developing plans to improve what locals say is a dangerous half-mile section of Lamor Road.
The targeted area is a half-mile stretch of two-lane road that drops about 75 feet into a narrow ravine, crosses Pine Hollow Run and then climbs back out of the ravine, all in a relatively sharp double S-curve just west of Pa. Route 18. The stretch of Lamor Road is the quickest connection between Sharpsville and busy Route 18.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has come up with four alternatives to the current road configuration, all of which would basically reduce the double-S section of road to a much more gradual single S-curve.
PennDOT will ask the public what it thinks of the alternatives in a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Hermitage Municipal Building on Route 18.
"It's been a long time in coming," said City Manager Gary Hinkson of the project. He noted that city officials have long been concerned about the elevation, turns and narrowness of that piece of road.
Hermitage isn't alone.
The traffic
Sharpsville Borough Manager Michael Wilson said Sharpsville and neighboring South Pymatuning Township also have expressed concerns about the road for the past 15 years.
It has a significant amount of truck traffic, particularly from large Dean Dairy trucks coming and going to that company's South Pymatuning Township plant.
Michael Nashtock, a township supervisor, said school buses must also run that route daily, and it can be dangerous driving large road maintenance vehicles through that ravine.
He recounted one winter day when he was driving a truck with a 10-foot snow plow mounted on the front and met a car carrier truck right on the bridge. He said he still doesn't know how they missed each other.
Changing the road grade and straightening the curves would help the motoring public, Nashtock said.
The roadway, officially known by PennDOT as Pa. Route 518, is a major east-west route linking Sharpsville and the township with Route 18 in Hermitage.
That importance has grown with the recent state completion of a $13 million project that widened Route 18 from two to five lanes to improve north-south traffic flow through the region, Wilson said.
In addition to the turns and the sharp drop in elevation, the bridge over Pine Hollow Run is on one of the turns and is only about 26 feet wide from guardrail to guardrail.
Although officials consider it dangerous, it hasn't been the scene of a significantly high number of serious accidents.
Proposed design
Neither Hermitage nor Sharpsville has taken any position on the proposed PennDOT alternatives, though Wilson said he'd like to see the elevation of the road raised and the curves eliminated.
That isn't in any of PennDOT's alternatives, though PennDOT does propose "flattening" the curves and perhaps raising the bridge elevation somewhat, said Dean Collins, project manager for PennDOT.
There will still be a dip, but the approaches to that dip won't be so sharp, he said.
Collins said the state hasn't decided whether the new stream crossing will actually be a bridge or just a large culvert pipe.
Tuesday's presentation will offer some options, Collins said, noting that members of the public might have other suggestions the state could consider.
Final project designs are at least a year away, he added.
The project carries a price estimate of $3 million but Collins said the actual cost will be determined by which option the state chooses.
There are some additional design concerns the state must take into account, he said, noting that Hermitage has a sewer pump station at the bottom of the ravine, right next to the road.
The city is also talking about putting a bike path through the ravine in that area, he said.
The PennDOT alternatives show that the road will be a total of 24 feet wide, about the same as it is now, but each side of the road will get an 8-foot berm, something it doesn't have now.
Nearly all of that section of road has no berm at all, with the hillside or guardrail right next to the driving surface.