Oh Cumberland County, how did you get so lost? Can you not see the congestion in YOUR county? Some of the worst traffic I have experienced EVER was in Cumberland County (the Pike @ rush hour on a Friday...need I say more?).
County orders transit study
Probe to focus on gridlock
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
BY MATT MILLER
Of Our Carlisle Bureau
CARLISLE - For months, Cumberland County commissioners have been embroiled in a battle about the proposed Corridor One midstate commuter-rail system.
Still, they know there is much more to the county's transportation picture than whether a passenger train rumbles into the West Shore.
There are planes, trucks, cars -- and freight trains -- to consider, too.
So commissioners have ordered the county transportation authority to study every aspect of transportation affecting Cumberland and to devise options to deal with existing and anticipated problems.
"We all realize that transportation has to be at the top of this administration's priorities," Commissioner Rick Rovegno said.
The countywide exam, expected to take at least a year, will focus on issues from traffic gridlock to taking tractor-trailers off highways by giving companies more options to ship freight by rail.
It also is likely to address criticisms commissioners are voicing about Capital Area Transit, the region's bus provider.
The freight rail option is atop the commission's list because of a Norfolk Southern proposal to expand its freight service in the Northeast. Company officials have said that could take hundreds of thousands of trucks off the road and shift their cargoes to rail cars.
Commission Chairman Bruce Barclay called that an attractive option, especially if it cuts truck traffic on Interstate 81.
"For every truck you get off the road, that's a home run," Barclay said. "If that freight could be on a railroad track instead of the highway it would be beneficial to every resident of the county."
Commissioner Gary Eichelberger said increased freight rail use "would provide a far greater benefit for the dollar than Corridor One. ... I'd much rather take a truck off the road than a car."
A federal grant recently was secured to bring a rail spur to the Allen Distribution warehouse complex on Carlisle's west end, Eichelberger said, adding that more such initiatives are needed.
Rovegno said consideration should be given to encouraging the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to create truck-dedicated lanes on I-81 to lessen the need for cars and tractor-trailers to mix.
The old Cumberland Valley Railroad bridge could become part of a "bus-dedicated route" to give commuters a better, faster option to travel between Harrisburg and the West Shore, he said.
Serious steps to promote car-pooling and to encourage the state and other major employers to stagger employee work schedules to shift traffic away from rush hours also might ease pressure on the highways, Rovegno said.
Barclay said the Carlisle Airport must be examined as well because the privately owned strip in South Middleton Twp. is important economically to the county's midsection.
All three commissioners said CAT should be more innovative to attract riders and called for more turnover in the membership of its board.
"CAT needs an injection of new blood," Rovegno said.
Dick Miller, chairman of the CAT board, said the makeup of the seven-member panel is up to commissioners in Dauphin and Cumberland counties and Harrisburg city officials. Harrisburg and Cumberland each appoint two members for four-year terms and Dauphin County names three members.
Miller called Cumberland's transit study a "positive step" and offered CAT's advice and information.
"I'd welcome any input they have. We try a lot of different things, but if they have other ideas, we'll welcome them," he said.
James Szymborski, executive director of the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, said Cumberland's study won't have to start from scratch.
His agency released a regional transportation plan in late 2003, he said, and the Harrisburg Area Transportation Study addresses many crucial transit concerns in its 2005-08 project list.
Szymborski agreed that transportation is the midstate's No. 1 issue "because of the press it has received and the [traffic] congestion people are experiencing."
Many problems are due to poor or nonexistent planning that "destroyed the functionality of roads," such as the Carlisle Pike on the West Shore, he said. Such roads were intended as through-ways, he said, but instead are choked with driveways.
"We need to convince developers and municipalities that they have to take a close look at where these projects are and the traffic they will generate," Szymborski said. "We're starting to see that attitudinal change."
Eichelberger said one aim of Cumberland's study -- an aim likely to be popular with motorists -- will be to find ways to eliminate the many traffic choke points that irritate commuters.
"It's not that you need one big solution," he said. "You need plenty of little solutions."
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The surrounding areas were very pretty. Saw most parts of the city while lost at various times during the weekend. (I am very used to grid streets...If we lived there, we would have to get a GPS!
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