43
Road improvements planned in township
By MARY GRZEBIENIAK
NEW CASTLE, Pa.
A turning lane that Mahoning Township residents have long desired at U.S. Route 224 and Pa. Route 551 is on the list of road improvements slated for Lawrence County.
The turning lane on Route 224 is scheduled to be added as part of road improvements when the blue bridge over the Mahoning River and a smaller bridge west of it are replaced starting later this year.
Dan Cessna of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s District 11 office told Lawrence County commissioners at their meeting last week that a turning lane is now included in the project, even though residents had been told in 2008 that it would not be included because the intersection did not qualify for a turn lane by either volume of traffic or number of accidents. Kenneth Siebert of PennDOT said Wednesday that since that hearing, PennDOT officials revisited the site and decided that a turning lane is justified.
The intersection on the two-lane highway where many westbound travelers turn south into Edinburg has been the site of numerous accidents, according to Mahoning Township Supervisor Vito Yeropoli, who welcomed the turning-lane news when contacted Wednesday. One of the more memorable accidents at the intersection involved a truck striking and destroying a World War II monument in a grassy area at the intersection in 2003.
Cessna was at the commissioners’ meeting to give an overview of PennDOT’s scheduled work in Lawrence County over the next two years.
Cessna also said that later this year, the replacement of the two bridges will begin in Mahoning Township. He said that the traffic will be detoured only for the final weeks of the project, which will be completed next year.