With 10M square feet of warehouses coming, Morrisville residents want truck traffic fix

When heavy trucks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue, the residents say their homes shake and rattle, and they want relief.

Their new neighbor, the Keystone Trade Center in neighboring Falls, is making life loud and dangerous as the huge industrial and warehouse complex on the former U.S. Steel is built and tenants move in.

Ultimately, Keystone could host over 10-million-square-feet of commercial space on some 1,800 acres.

Morrisville residents packed a recent meeting with Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials to complain about the truck traffic going through town and how they say it is damaging their homes and disrupting their lives.

Several residents described their houses shaking, starting in the wee hours of the morning as the trucks pass by. One woman said she sat for an hour and counted 113 trucks, with only seven doing the 25 miles per hour speed limit.

"I have cracks in my ceiling, in my foundation. You can feel your house rumbled," she said. And she said there was a gas leak in the street that PECO fixed.

"My whole house shakes, morning to night," another Pennsylvania Avenue resident said, while another talked about the dust and debris in the air from truck exhaust and dump trucks filled with dirt without tarps covering the mounds as they pass through the borough.

Another resident described a truck accident in December, with the truck striking his house. And mothers of children talked about the dangers to their kids walking to school since the borough has no school bus service.

Both PennDOT representatives and an executive for Keystone Trade Center said they are trying to get truck drivers to reroute their vehicles onto Route 13 and Tyburn Road from the Route 1 Expressway, rather than drive directly to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Pennsylvania Avenue serves as both a main street in Morrisville and the entrance drive to the massive industrial complex.

Could a new bridge be a solution for Morrisville traffic?

But the best long-term solution might be to build a new bridge connecting Tyburn Road and the industrial/warehouse sites directly with Route 29 in New Jersey, one official said.

That would allow truck traffic from New Jersey easy access to the massive warehouses plants in Falls without having to travel through Morrisville and neighboring communities, a recent study found. But there are no current plans for a new span, which could also take years and millions and millions of dollars to build.

Councilwoman Helen Hlahol told residents that the bridge suggestion is included in a "Lower Bucks Freight Access" study sponsored by Bucks County to be finalized this month by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, and that a further study of the idea is suggested.

The study of the traffic issues was undertaken during the summer and should be released this month, Hlahol said.

Warehouses move into Fall, bring traffic to Morrisville

The Keystone Trade Center built by NorthPoint Development, is billed as the largest industrial/warehouse park on the East Coast and is being constructed on what was once the home to a major U.S. Steel manufacturing plant. NorthPoint has said it is investing some $1.5 billion in the site and the business there could generate up to 1,000 jobs.

LPC Morrisville is building a separate 973,200-square-foot warehouse on 96 acres off Post Road.

With both sites under construction, the truck traffic to and from the area is creating major safety concerns in Morrisville.

"We want to help with this issue. We put up signs, passed out fliers," alerting truck drivers to use Route 13 to get to the site, NorthPoint Vice President Jeremy Michael said. He said the traffic should ease as the work to develop the site winds down in late 2025, which caused a groan in the audience.

More: Falls riverfront warehouse project with potential of 500 new jobs wins final approval

Morrisville residents ask for a housing study on Pennsylvania Avene

The residents asked if there could be a housing study to show how the warehouse developments are affecting their homes, their safety and their value.

As the residents spoke, a representative of state Sen. Steve Santarsiero took notes and Morrisville officials and a police officer responsible for truck traffic control listened.

PennDOT official Fran Hanney said that the department will install another sign on the Route 1 Expressway farther before the exit for Route 13 to alert truck drivers to get off there, but other fixes will take longer.

He suggested that raised speed-reducing plates could be placed in the roadway on Pennsylvania Avenue to force the trucks to drive slower and as incentive to take Route 13.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: PennDOT works to keep truck traffic of Pennsylvania Avenue in Morrisville