Strong Towns Happy Valley

Recently, PennDOT moved into the advanced preliminary stages of planning the expansion of route 322. At this point, they are still soliciting public feedback, and held an open house at Mt. Nittany Middle School on August 15. I went to this open house to talk with community members and PennDOT engineers, as well as to get a better sense of what is happening with this project.

Currently PennDOT is considering three options for the expansion. All involve building four lanes of traffic separate from the existing two lane road. We are told that we need this project for a couple main reasons. First, PennDOT thinks that current traffic on the road is unacceptably congested and will only get worse with projected growth. Secondly, they express their desire to make the road safer using this expansion.

Unfortunately, everything I heard at the meeting reinforced my belief that this project is extremely fiscally irresponsible. As Americans, we are used to complaining about the poor condition of our roads. It’s a fact of life here. Therefore, it’s astonishing to me that, when PennDOT can’t even maintain the roads that it currently has, it would continue to build more. This road won’t solve our congestion problems. All it will do is make our existing roads worse and contribute to the endless backlog of construction projects that taxpayers can’t pay for.

As for the supposed safety improvements, that’s a blatantly obvious tack-on to the real reason this highway is being expanded. If PennDOT cared about safety, their solution to this problem wouldn’t be more car infrastructure. Additionally, the current road will still exist in this project, so I really fail to see what safety improvement this will have.

Then we come to what will be lost with this expansion. All three options will destroy at least 70 acres of farmland split between almost 20 different agricultural operations, as well as potentially dozens of homes. There’s also the consideration of natural resources that will be lost, including wetlands and woodland habitats. Sometimes, in the service of a project for the public good, there really is no choice but to pave over private property and natural resources. But, given the financial insolvency and irresponsibility of continuing to expand our highways, is it really fair to call on our neighbors to make these sacrifices?

I recommend going to the project website at www.penndot.pa.gov/scac to learn more about this project and to provide your comments. I strongly recommend going to the Get Involved/Contact Us section of this project website and letting PennDOT know that this project is not necessary for our community to continue to thrive, and will in fact be more of a burden than a help over time. Any comments they receive before August 30 will be added to the record of the recent public meeting, but you can still reach out after that as well! This is a great moment to come together as a community and demand better.

Evan