PennDOT meeting outlines bridge, roadway work planned in 2023 for Somerset County

Two bridge replacement projects, several bridge rehabilitations and many road resurfacing and maintenance projects are taking place this year across Somerset County, according to executives from the District 9 office of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

An update on plans to finish U.S. Route 219 to Old Salisbury Road in Maryland was also presented Tuesday during the Somerset County 2023 Transportation Outreach meeting, held at the Sipesville Volunteer Fire Company, where county and local government officials and PennDOT representatives were in attendance.

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“Nobody knows the roads better than you do, we realize that,” said Vince Greenland, acting district executive. “Any input that you can provide us is invaluable to us and in the end makes our projects better.”

Greenland and Assistant District Executives Brad Brumbaugh and Dave Kammerer are rotating as acting district executives over the coming six months until PennDOT selects a new District 9 executive. Tom Prestash, former District 9 executive, now leads District 2, which covers Clearfield, Centre, Mifflin, Juniata, Clinton, Cameron, Elk, McKean and Potter counties.

“I think I can speak for Brad, Dave and even Tom when I say that the staff that we have in the district office is second to none across the state,” Greenland said. “The men and women in the district offices, in the county offices, they’re still here, they’re what makes us go. So no matter who’s sitting in the chair as district executive, I think you’ll still see that great service that you’ve come to know for District 9.”

As an overall picture, Greenland said 4% of Somerset County’s total deck area, or bridge roadways, and 24% of its road assets are considered as poor, one of the classifications that PennDOT uses to prioritize projects. Those numbers are in line with state figures, which show 6% of the total deck area and 23% of roadway assets are classified as poor.

“Of the 217 miles total across (Somerset) county that are considered poor, about 209 of those (miles) are on those back roads (low traffic volume roads),” he said.

“One of the things that has made us successful is how we look at our roadway assets and bridge assets, and what we refer to as the lowest lifecycle-cost analysis,” he said. “What that really means is, we want to do the right treatment for the right project at the right time.”

High-traffic roadways, especially those with greater volumes of truck traffic, deteriorate more rapidly, Greenland said.

“So what we want to try to do to extend the life is to do another treatment before that deterioration starts,” he said. “A lot of times, it appears that the roadway is in good condition when we’re doing a treatment, but what we’re trying to do is extend that life before it gets in a worse condition, where we have a much more expensive repair to make.”

Those preventive treatments help keep the district’s most heavily-traveled roadways like Route 219 and Route 22 in good condition some 60 years after their construction, Greenland said.

Bridge replacements planned

Two local bridges are being replaced this year, one in Summit Township and one in Jennerstown Borough.

Fike Bridge is now under construction in Summit Township, Greenland said. This bridge, which carries Bender Bridge Road over Elk Lick Run, has been closed to traffic since 2020, when a vehicle accident damaged the original 1885-built, iron truss bridge beyond repair.

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The new bridge was scheduled to reopen in October, but as work is progressing ahead of schedule, the bridge could reopen as early as this summer, he said.

The Jennerstown Borough project will replace a 1917-built, concrete arch bridge that carries state Route 4023, aka Black Hill Road, over Beaver Dam Creek.

A nearly four-month detour is to go into effect in mid- to late May for this work, said Joe Casper, assistant construction engineer for District 9. Two detours are planned around the work site; one is a 3.5-mile detour on Route 4023 and the other is a 2.8-mile detour on Mountain Road.

This $1.1 million bridge project is scheduled to be finished in September.

Other construction projects

Many other bridge rehabilitation and road resurfacing projects are also underway or scheduled to start soon, Casper said.

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Signs are in place alerting motorists to a bridge preservation project taking place along U.S. Route 219 in Jenner Township. A long-term lane closure will be in place until the work is completed in November. Three more bridges along Route 219, south of Somerset, are getting work done as well.

Four local bridges are also being rehabilitated this season: Abex Road over Quemahoning Creek, in Conemaugh and Quemahoning townships; Brehm Road over Bens Creek, in Jenner Township; Tooland Road over Wills Creek, in Northampton Township; and Walnut Street over Flaugherty Creek, in Meyersdale Borough.

These are the last of 12 bridges to be completed in an overall $2.5 million local bridge rehabilitation project that began last year, Casper said.

Meanwhile, road resurfacing and seal-coating projects are scheduled in many areas of the county including Stoystown, Salisbury, Conemaugh Township, Shanksville, Berlin, Somerset and Meyersdale.

Safety improvement work is to be done at the intersection of Route 1001, aka Stutzmantown Road, and Pleasant Hill Road, near Somerset, and a slide correction project on Route 985 near Thomas Mills, in Conemaugh Township, will be completed later in the year, Casper said.

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The complete list of Somerset County projects scheduled for 2023 will be posted at the District 9 website, under the 2023 Transportation Outreach link.

Future projects

District 9 is also working on projects for the 2024 and 2025 construction seasons, Greenland said. These include plans for road and bridge preservation projects along Route 219 from Route 30 to Somerset; installing signage and warning lights at the intersection of Route 281 and Route 653 in New Centerville Borough to improve safety at that intersection; and making safety improvements along Route 219 at the Casselman Curve, Clark Road and Ernest Miller Road near Meyersdale.

Extending Route 219 to Maryland update

Greenland said a public meeting will be announced for late this summer or in the fall to provide an update and present the preferred design options for construction of the final section of Route 219 from Meyersdale to Old Salisbury Road in Maryland.

“We anticipate having our preferred alternatives identified by the end of the year (2023),” he said. “At that point, everybody would know where the alignment is, and then we would be able to finalize our documents moving forward.”

This final piece of the long-awaited project is expected to cost about $300 million, he said. Pre-construction costs of $60 million have already been budgeted in the state’s four-year Transportation Improvement Plan.

Construction costs for the final section are estimated at $240 million, of which $136 million is accounted for in the state’s Twelve-Year Plan as long as federal funding levels remain the same, Greenland said.

“There is a shortfall of $104 million,” he said. “We’re actively working with a number of different partners on trying to come up with different ways to fund that shortfall, which we’re confident we’ll be able to do.”

He added that PennDOT is still planning to open bids for this project in 2029 and have the roadway completed in early 2031.

“We’ve completed (Route 219) from (Route) 22 all the way to Meyersdale, so it’s a short piece to finish it and have that interconnection with (Route) 68,” Greenland said.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of interest from Somerset County about the importance of having that section completed, which would then hopefully generate additional economic development for the county. Obviously, too, it’ll take a lot of the truck traffic off of the other roads in the area and put it on (Route) 219, on a nice four-lane facility. There’s obvious safety improvements associated with that as well.”

This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Somerset PA roads, bridges on PennDOT 2023 project calendar