Last Day For Your Say On Route 422 Draft

Cover of the 422 Master Plan Summary Report.

PHILADELPHIA PA – Today (Monday, Nov. 30, 2009) is the last day available for public comment on the draft executive summary of a report likely to affect the future of the 25-mile-long U.S. Route 422 corridor between King of Prussia PA and Reading PA, and its tens of thousands of residents.

• Read the 66-page draft report, issued in October 2009, here.
• Comment on the report here. To be able to comment, you must join the report’s host website – 422Corridor.com – as a member, in the same way you would join any social network like Twitter or Facebook. Becoming a member requires commenters to supply only a verifiable e-mail address and desired password. No personal information need be supplied unless desired.

“The U.S. 422 Corridor Master Plan Summary Report” is an overview of current economic, social, land use and transportation conditions along what the Philadelphia-based Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, for which the report was prepared, considers “the single most important and fastest-growing suburban expressway in the Philadelphia suburban region.”

The report’s statistics, tables, charts, graphs and supplemental materials also form a justification for what some members of the public describe as thought-provoking, even controversial, proposals. They include:

• The potential for open road tolling on U.S. Route 422, currently a free roadway, to raise funds for its improvement and other forms of transportation as well;
• The extension of rail service from Norristown into western Montgomery and Berks counties, possibly as far as Reading;
• The addition of new, and expansion of existing, bicycle and walking trail systems to accommodate alternate transportation; and
• Land use changes that would intensify development in certain areas, restrict it in others, and undoubtedly change the appearance and function of most affected towns and villages over the course of a decade.

Such suggestions are not new. Most have been publicly discussed and dissected for months, and some for years. The report, however, represents a comprehensive packaging of the proposals, and shows how they might be put into practice as various components of a single plan. Experts say implementing them is necessary to prevent further vehicular gridlock on 422, and prevent an unsustainable sprawl of development across the corridor.

Lower Pottsgrove, Limerick and Pottstown are prominent in the report.

Lower Pottsgrove and Limerick (PA) townships, and the borough of Pottstown, figure prominently in the report. Some of its recommendations deal specifically with existing or future scenarios in all three municipalities. They lie in the center of the corridor, and parts of each are foreseen as sites of intense commercial and residential construction through 2015.

Public comments made on the report will be incorporated into a final document to be published later next year, according to its author, the engineering and planning firm McCormick Taylor. Municipal governments must then approve the report to allow its advancement.

Related:

• Isolating Report’s Look At Lower Pottsgrove

Related (to U.S. Route 422 Corridor planning):

• Notebook Worthy (Aug. 24, 2009)
• Consultants Express Interest In Studying 422
• Don’t Like 422 Tolling? Website Wants Your Alternative
• Truckers Alerted On Highway Partnerships Bill
• In 422 Debate, Time A Hindrance And Help
• Notebook Worthy (June 29, 2009)
• Growth, Planners Say, Is 422’s Growing Problem
• Tech Used To Draw For 422 Meetings
• Route 422 Toll Meetings Next Week
• 422 Repairs, Delays Start Tuesday
• 422 Proposal, Like Traffic, Creeps Ahead
• Got A Route 422 Idea? Time To Air It
• Train Service On The Front Burner Once More

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