Pennsylvania

[Crown Victoria]

What was the reasoning that I-81 and US 11 run so far apart between Harrisburg and Wilkes Barre?  It just seems so odd that virtually everywhere else 81 is within 5 miles of 11.

I looked at the PAHighways site which always has a great depth of info.  I see there was a plan pre 81 to take a Turnpike extension Harrisburg to Scranton.  But I suppose that could have theoretically also followed US 11.

US 11 follows the Susquehanna River. Much of the valley is already developed, with a number of towns and built-up areas. It would have been expensive to shoehorn a freeway in there - PennDOT still hasn't managed to do it along much of the distance.

I-81, on the other hand, largely follows a new terrain alignment so it had less development to accommodate. I-81 also shares almost 20 miles heading northeast out of Harrisburg with a freeway that would have needed built anyway for I-78, and the overall route is shorter than US 11.

It's also worth noting that I-81 passes directly through a much larger stretch of the anthracite coal region of PA than US 11. It's certainly possible that this route was seen as a benefit to coal mining interests (even though the coal industry was well in decline in the area by the 1960s) and the regional economy in general (more recently realized with the warehouses popping up), aside from being an overall shorter route and having much more favorable geography than US 11's route.

[74/171FAN]

PennDOT Website on PA 228:Lanes to Shift on Route 228 for MSA Thruway Work

Corrected the URL for ya since they changed the newsid.

Oddly enough I got two emails on this news release. 

PA 228 is probably going to end up in the center of a roadmeet within the next few years.  Eventually, it is supposed to be widened to at least four lanes and realigned at points all the way east to PA 8.

[jmacswimmer]

Didn't get any pictures, but I was on I-83 yesterday and it appears the exit 28 signs have now been completely replaced with proper PA 297 shields!  The 7 in the shield still looked a little funky when whizzing by, but it's much much better than the patch job discussed previously in this thread

Update: Got a picture of one of the new signs.

[Mr_Northside]

PennDOT Website on PA 228:Lanes to Shift on Route 228 for MSA Thruway Work

Corrected the URL for ya since they changed the newsid.

Another reason to be glad to be working from home (even if it is due to a friggin' pandemic) - Hopefully then can get all that done before (if???) we have to start going back to the office (I think they started the traffic restrictions not long after my team started working from home)

[sbeaver44]

What was the reasoning that I-81 and US 11 run so far apart between Harrisburg and Wilkes Barre?  It just seems so odd that virtually everywhere else 81 is within 5 miles of 11.

I looked at the PAHighways site which always has a great depth of info.  I see there was a plan pre 81 to take a Turnpike extension Harrisburg to Scranton.  But I suppose that could have theoretically also followed US 11.

US 11 follows the Susquehanna River. Much of the valley is already developed, with a number of towns and built-up areas. It would have been expensive to shoehorn a freeway in there - PennDOT still hasn't managed to do it along much of the distance.

I-81, on the other hand, largely follows a new terrain alignment so it had less development to accommodate. I-81 also shares almost 20 miles heading northeast out of Harrisburg with a freeway that would have needed built anyway for I-78, and the overall route is shorter than US 11.

It's also worth noting that I-81 passes directly through a much larger stretch of the anthracite coal region of PA than US 11. It's certainly possible that this route was seen as a benefit to coal mining interests (even though the coal industry was well in decline in the area by the 1960s) and the regional economy in general (more recently realized with the warehouses popping up), aside from being an overall shorter route and having much more favorable geography than US 11's route.

Well that does all make sense.  Funny how it never seemed to happen anywhere else along 81.

[Alps]

Didn't get any pictures, but I was on I-83 yesterday and it appears the exit 28 signs have now been completely replaced with proper PA 297 shields!  The 7 in the shield still looked a little funky when whizzing by, but it's much much better than the patch job discussed previously in this thread

Update: Got a picture of one of the new signs.

No you didn't.

[rickmastfan67]

PennDOT Website on PA 228:Lanes to Shift on Route 228 for MSA Thruway Work

Corrected the URL for ya since they changed the newsid.

Another reason to be glad to be working from home (even if it is due to a friggin' pandemic) - Hopefully then can get all that done before (if???) we have to start going back to the office (I think they started the traffic restrictions not long after my team started working from home)

Here's a story and video from KDKA about this:
https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/10/20/cranberry-township-tunnel-msa-thruway/

I've only been up to Cranberry once since this entire C19 thing, so I had 0 idea that this was even happening since I used US-19 only!

[briantroutman]

What was the reasoning that I-81 and US 11 run so far apart between Harrisburg and Wilkes Barre?  It just seems so odd that virtually everywhere else 81 is within 5 miles of 11.

I looked at the PAHighways site which always has a great depth of info.  I see there was a plan pre 81 to take a Turnpike extension Harrisburg to Scranton.  But I suppose that could have theoretically also followed US 11.

This is a question that has occurred to me in the past, and while I don't have any definite answers, I have a few thoughts.

Let's say that the prevailing intent was for I-81 to follow US 11 more closely through the Central Susquehanna Valley: Perhaps the challenges that dissuaded engineers from taking that path are the same reasons why, after the CSVT is completed, there will remain a roughly 30-mile gap in an otherwise an all-freeway route from Rochester to Baltimore.

Then also, as you mentioned, I-81's routing perhaps owes something to prior planning by the PTC for a diagonal Harrisburg/Scranton connection. And, as was the case with both the mainline east-west Turnpike as well as the Northeast Extension, the PTC seemed to plan alignments without much regard for existing corridors or intermediate destinations between major control points. So it's logical that a PTC-planned alignment between Harrisburg and Scranton would follow the shortest practical routing between those two points without regard for the preceding route (US 11) or small towns along the way (Selinsgrove, Bloomsburg, Berwick, etc.). Furthering that line of thinking: Note that the greatest divergence between US 11 and I-81 is the section between the two ostensible endpoints of a PTC-planned Harrisburg-Scranton extension.

On the other hand, despite the references to "planned extensions"  I've seen on PAHighways.com, in Dan Cupper's PTC history book, and elsewhere, I wonder how far any of these proposed extensions got beyond vague pie-in-the-sky ideas and lines casually drawn on a map. I've seen a couple of mid '50s maps depicting future toll roads, and they don't show a straight Harrisburg-Scranton route that's truly equivalent to today's I-81. Rather, they show a somewhat diagonal east-west road that would have been north of today's I-78 corridor and would have required travelers to switch to the Northeast Extension to continue to Scranton. One map (below) even shows the route being roughly along the US 209 corridor and inexplicably dead ending somewhere north of Harrisburg, perhaps at Millersburg–an odd detail also mentioned on PAHighways.

[ARMOURERERIC]

You asked if any of the proposals got beyond the wish level:. What is I-90 in Erie County actually broke ground as a Turnpike project.  What is I-79 in Franklin Park And Ohio To in Pittsburgh has some ROW aquisition under the PTC.

[briantroutman]

What is I-90 in Erie County actually broke ground as a Turnpike project.

I've long wondered about that, too.

Jeff Kitsko's article on I-90 mentions that the road had at least gotten to the final design phase under the auspices of the PTC by the time that the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was passed–and that the 1956 PTC system map showed the Northwestern Extension as "under construction" . But the article also says that the "plans"  were shipped from the PTC to the PDH in 1956 and that construction began in 1958.

Assuming that the PTC had finalized designs (or even began construction) on what's today I-90, then simply handed over the plans to the PDH, I have to wonder why I-90 was so unlike anything in the Pennsylvania Turnpike system at the time. I-90 has a roughly 50-foot grass median. Exits are closely spaced, with minor interchanges generally being diamonds and some larger ones adding one or more loop ramps. Perhaps that's explains by the PTC planning to use barrier tolls instead of a closed ticket system (which I would find surprising since the entire system was closed-ticket at the time), but even so, why would the Northwestern Extensions design standards be so different from the Northeastern Extension, which was still under construction in 1956 and wouldn't be completed until the end of 1957.

Actually, I-90's design standards put me in mind of some other late '50s PDH "clean sheet"  designs of free Interstates such as I-80 near Corsicana (1958) and I-81 south of Greencastle (1959). (By "clean sheet" , I mean not an upgrade of an existing highway that was planned or begun prior to the 1956 Act–such as I-70 near New Stanton (PA 71), I-83 near York (US 111), and I-78 in Berks County (US 22).)

If you know of any resources that have more detailed information on the PTC's progress in planning/designing roads that were later built as free Interstates, I'd be very interested in looking at them.

[ARMOURERERIC]

One reason I claim it was started as a PTC project is that the mainline lanes were built to PTC specs and with weather up there, they were already doing a full rebuild in 1977

[sbeaver44]

Fantastic discussion!

Not that 81 always directly follows these routes but I feel like it loosely corresponds to US 22/PA 72/PA 443/PA 125/US 209/US-PA 309 so the US 209 thing is really interesting to me.

I'm definitely glad 81 got built where it did (3rd lane between 83 and 78 please) as 11 is still a high quality corridor between 22/322 and Selinsgrove.  Schuylkill County having a good connection to other places is great for them. 

[rickmastfan67]

So, going thru some of my dad's old stuff the other day, I came across two pretty interesting items going back to the beginning days of the Interstate system here in PA.

One was a progress report for I-79, dated 07/01/68 showing the current progress on the Interstate at that time.  The map is similar to the one shown on the PA Highways history page for I-79 from 1970. However, this 1968 map mentions PA-358, while doesn't have a single mention of US-19, US-62, PA-50, or PA-198.  Also has a few less cities mentioned in comparison with it's 1970 counterpart.

The second was a layout of I-81 Exit 66, with the mention of being constructed in "Late 1968".  The most interesting thing about it, is cities they used to show which direction I-81 was going towards.  For NB I-81, they listed the control cities of "Ottawa - Canada; Indiantown Gap".  For SB I-81, they had "Carlisle; New Orleans - Louisiana".  Pretty interesting choices by PADOH back then.

[jemacedo9]

Per PennDOT, all lanes of the new US 322 through Potters Gap will be open by the end of tomorrow.

[noelbotevera]

Per PennDOT, all lanes of the new US 322 through Potters Gap will be open by the end of tomorrow.

One step closer to closing that gap. Only a mere, oh, 9 miles to build through open land. Probably opening by 2040 at the rate we're going.

In all honesty the PA 144 intersection was a problem especially if you wanted to turn left onto US 322 - then it became a deathtrap. I never understood why PennDOT didn't finish the freeway to State College when they initially built it.

[74/171FAN]

Per PennDOT, all lanes of the new US 322 through Potters Gap will be open by the end of tomorrow.

One step closer to closing that gap. Only a mere, oh, 9 miles to build through open land. Probably opening by 2040 at the rate we're going.

In all honesty the PA 144 intersection was a problem especially if you wanted to turn left onto US 322 - then it became a deathtrap. I never understood why PennDOT didn't finish the freeway to State College when they initially built it.

The news release is linked here.

Well the Lewistown Narrows was not completely freeway until 2008 so funding has been a problem for a long while.

[74/171FAN]

The US 62/US 62 BUS Roundabout in Hermitage is expected to be fully to southbound traffic tomorrow.

[noelbotevera]

I'm heading to NYC rather soon, but I'm not looking for the fast way. Would I-81 ->  US 209 -> I-80 be a good scenic route, or is there anything better? I'd prefer not to go north of I-80 and meander too much, nor trying to reach the beginning of US 209 (I swear I'll clinch it - one of these days).

[74/171FAN]

I'm heading to NYC rather soon, but I'm not looking for the fast way. Would I-81 ->  US 209 -> I-80 be a good scenic route, or is there anything better? I'd prefer not to go north of I-80 and meander too much, nor trying to reach the beginning of US 209 (I swear I'll clinch it - one of these days).

I cannot remember off the top of my head on how scenic US 209 is, but your route is fine if you want to get to NYC relatively quickly.  It can be pretty slow going through Pottsville, Tamaqua, Jim Thorpe, and Lehighton, but it gets much faster east of I-476.

Obviously, the real scenic portion of US 209 is north of I-80 through the Delaware Water Gap.

[noelbotevera]

I'm heading to NYC rather soon, but I'm not looking for the fast way. Would I-81 ->  US 209 -> I-80 be a good scenic route, or is there anything better? I'd prefer not to go north of I-80 and meander too much, nor trying to reach the beginning of US 209 (I swear I'll clinch it - one of these days).

I cannot remember off the top of my head on how scenic US 209 is, but your route is fine if you want to get to NYC relatively quickly.  It can be pretty slow going through Pottsville, Tamaqua, Jim Thorpe, and Lehighton, but it gets much faster east of I-476.

Obviously, the real scenic portion of US 209 is north of I-80 through the Delaware Water Gap.

Rather out of the way and I've already traveled through the gap (IMO, too many trees and not enough river views; lots of the good stuff is off US 209). I could try PA 443, potentially less traffic and I still reach US 209.

[Alps]

I'm heading to NYC rather soon, but I'm not looking for the fast way. Would I-81 ->  US 209 -> I-80 be a good scenic route, or is there anything better? I'd prefer not to go north of I-80 and meander too much, nor trying to reach the beginning of US 209 (I swear I'll clinch it - one of these days).

I might suggest 895 instead of the first half of 209.

[Rothman]

Does this road trip advice need to be split into another thread?

[74/171FAN]

I'm heading to NYC rather soon, but I'm not looking for the fast way. Would I-81 ->  US 209 -> I-80 be a good scenic route, or is there anything better? I'd prefer not to go north of I-80 and meander too much, nor trying to reach the beginning of US 209 (I swear I'll clinch it - one of these days).

I might suggest 895 instead of the first half of 209.

If I remember correctly, the only traffic signals on PA 895 from its western end at PA 443 in Pine Grove and its eastern end at PA 248 in Bowmanstown are at the intersections with PA 61 (jughandles at both ends of the PA 61/PA 895 concurrency).

[74/171FAN]

Latest update on the Potters Mills Gap project:  https://www.penndot.gov/regionaloffices/district-2/pages/details.aspx?newsid=1838

[Hwy 61 Revisited]

When do you think the Stroudsburg stretch of the I-80 project will be done? And what would the parts past that look like?