A transportation study that listed keys to unlocking gridlocked Harrisburg Pike won a national award last year.
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Now, local officials are hoping it will catch the eye of the U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
Lancaster County transportation officials on Monday voted to package the Harrisburg Pike Transportation and Land Use Study with an application to a special stimulus-funded grant program.
The $1.5 billion is being administered at LaHood's discretion.
Although an amount has not been set, the application will likely ask for between $50 million and $100 million for Harrisburg Pike improvements.
Those improvements would add turning lanes and sidewalks, synchronize traffic signals and rebuild intersections along the heavily traveled road between Lancaster City and State Road in East Hempfield Township, said Lancaster County Senior Transportation Planner David Royer.
The five-mile stretch includes the intersection with North Prince Street, near Clipper Magazine Stadium, Franklin & Marshall College, Long's Park and Park City Center, Rohrerstown Road, and the interchange at Route 283 and State Road.
Royer believes the county has a good shot at getting the money.
After all, he said, the study was named project of the year by the Mid-Atlantic Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and was honored by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Pennsylvania.
"We would think that we've done everything right," Royer said of the plan.
But the two defining characteristics of Lancaster County may doom the application: our economy is too good and we're too cheap.
The stimulus spending is intended to fund needed infrastructure projects, and to get people working and spending money in areas worst-hit by the economic crisis.
"If we have anything going against us, it's that our economy is not as bad as the rest of the country," said Royer, noting that Lancaster County's unemployment rate, at 6.7 percent, is a third lower than the national average.
And, the recommendations of the yearlong transportation study come with a relatively small price tag.
The study called for synchronizing traffic signals and adding turning lanes to improve traffic flow, adding sidewalks to improve pedestrian movement and additional Red Rose Transit Authority bus trips.
Those recommendations and others in the study total $51.1 million.
With the exclusion of the $19 million reconstruction of the Route 283/State Road intersection —\!q which is already earmarked for state funding — the study improvements come to $32.1 million.
That amount comes in at the bottom end of the Grants for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER, program.
TIGER is aimed at major, big-ticket projects that cost between $20 million and $300 million.
Not to worry, Royer told members of the county's Transportation Technical Advisory Committee.
The study area includes the Harrisburg Pike and Route 30 interchange — where the Crossings at Conestoga Creek shopping plaza has been proposed — and the Lancaster City portion of the Dillerville rail yard.
The Crossings plan includes the $25 million rebuilding of the interchange. The last phase of the Dillerville plan includes the reconnection of city streets after the freight rail yard has been relocated.
Each of those projects could use an infusion of stimulus funds and each already has significant private-sector funding commitments.
"We're hopeful that will help our chances of being selected," said Royer.
Transportation committee members questioned whether there was any limit to the number of projects that could be proposed from one area. Royer said there was not, but the limiting factor was that projects had to be "shovel-ready."
The program has a Sept. 15 application deadline. Grants are due to be awarded in February and local transportation planners would have less than two years to have a project planned, and receive right-of-way and environmental clearances. That process typically takes several years.
Other county projects are not as far in the planning as the Harrisburg Pike study area, said Royer.
"We wanted to look for a project where we would be competitive," reiterated James Cowhey, executive director of the Lancaster County Planning Commission.
County transportation officials will be seeking resolutions of support from East Hempfield and Manheim townships. Lancaster City Council has already passed such a resolution.
Staff writer Bernard Harris can be reached at bharris@LNPnews.com or 481-6022.
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