No big issues to tackle, so Lancaster County Lookout will run through a few potholes and an abandoned van, and hope for bigger game next week.
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Let's start with the abandoned vehicle, which comes with an explanation of why a car or van sitting by the side of the road with its windows and headlights busted out and its radio missing will sit there for a week to 10 days after you've notified the police.
A short drive east of the Lancaster Stockyards on Marshall Avenue, between the old Stehli Silk Mill on Martha Avenue and a railroad bridge just north of East Ross Street, sits an abandoned van — a green Dodge Grand Caravan.
A Lancaster County Lookout reader says the vehicle has gotten worse since its abandonment about a week ago.
"For a few days there was an official-looking document on the windshield but now it's gone," the reader reports. "So are the plates, the back window and the radio.
"It's on its way to becoming even more of a wreck than it already is."
It's also on its way to being removed, Sgt. Tom Rudzinski, spokesman for Manheim Township police, told Lancaster County Lookout on Wednesday.
"That abandoned vehicle was reported to us June the 9th," Rudzinski said. "According to state law, we have to give them at least seven days to remove the car, by posting the car and sending a certified letter."
Rudzinski said he knows people are frustrated when an abandoned vehicle seems to linger and he understands their frustration.
But, he said, state law requires police to make an effort to contact the owner and give the person time to remove an abandoned vehicle, and that's why, barring a safety issue, the van couldn't be towed away immediately.
"It should be out of there in the next couple of days," Rudzinski said Wednesday morning.
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Now onto the potholes.
There's a fairly big bump in the eastbound lane of Lincoln Highway East in Ronks, just across the road from Bluegate Farms produce and bake shop.
Not sure it's a safety issue — if it is, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's maintenance department here in Lancaster County will fix it quickly, manager Scott Tanguy said Wednesday — but it's big enough that you hear it when a truck hits it.
And, thanks to it being between routes 896 and 897, it's going to get more than a temporary patch. That stretch of road recently got added to work being funded by the federal stimulus law, Tanguy said.
"It was an on-again, off-again project," he said. "I was recently told that it's back on again."
***
A second batch of potholes brings us back to Marshall Avenue, where one pothole was patched and a set of them is getting a look.
One, until Wednesday, straddled the Marshall Avenue side of the intersection just north of the Lititz Pike bridge.
As the reader who called it in noted, drivers were swinging into the left-turn lane meant for opposing traffic to avoid this fairly significant hole.
It's a tricky one — straddling the line between Lancaster City, Manheim Township and what is technically Route 222 — so Lancaster County Lookout called everyone possibly involved.
The result: PennDOT patched it Wednesday.
This week's third pothole issue is a set of them along westbound Marshall Avenue on the Stauffer Park side of the same intersection.
Carl Neff, director of public works for Manheim Township, said his crew will take care of that four- or five-car-length-long bumpy stretch.
"We'll certainly take a look at it and get it fixed," Neff said Wednesday.
***
For those who use Spring Valley Road to exit the Lancaster General Health Campus onto Rohrerstown Road (Route 741), here's a short update.
Last week, this column noted how difficult it is to make the left onto Route 741 and reported that PennDOT plans to look at that problem after it coordinates the lights along Route 741.
Well, it turns out that PennDOT hopes the coordination of lights will solve the problem, and there will be no need to install the left-turn signals requested by East Hempfield Township.
The coordination of signals includes increasing the time allowed to drivers on Spring Valley Road, which should alleviate the problem, PennDOT spokeswoman Fritzi Schreffler said.
"The (signal-coordination) project is to be let soon, and should begin by September," she said.
***
Remember that big puddle on North Cherry Street at East Ross Street that appeared in this column two weeks ago, the one Charlotte Katzenmoyer, director of public works for Lancaster City, promised to address "within two weeks"?
Inlets have been installed, the road has been repaved, and the fix seems to be working.
Lancaster County Lookout drove by about an hour into Wednesday afternoon's rainstorm, and again early this morning, and,
voila, no puddle.
