North Penn Could Update Traffic Study to Examine New Sumneytown Pike Driveway

Dan Sokil | The Reporter•

A car turns from Bridle Path Drive onto Sumneytown Pike, at an intersection where a new driveway entrance to North Penn High School could be added as

As North Penn School District officials continue talks on renovating the high school, an outside firm could be taking a fresh look at the traffic ramifications of those plans.

School board committee members have voted ahead updating a traffic study done of the roads surrounding the high school to look at the impact of a new driveway connecting the high school to Sumneytown Pike.

"Since the conceptual design has come to fruition, that conceptual design shows the potential of an entrance off of Sumneytown Pike,” said district Director of Facilities and Operations Tom Schneider.

Over the course of the year, district administrators have made the case to the board and public for a massive renovation of the high school, with a voter referendum set in January 2024 for voters to decide on borrowing $97 million to fund an expansion to move ninth graders there from the district’s three middle schools.

At the start of that process, the board heard last January from an outside traffic engineer about a study the district had commissioned in 2021, looking at what the addition of 1,000 students and 125 staff would do to traffic on the roads surrounding the campus.

At that time, the traffic engineer said they studied the intersections of Valley Forge Road and Sumneytown Pike, Valley Forge Road and the high school entrance opposite McAuliffe Lane, Valley Forge Road and Snyder Road, Snyder Road and the high school driveway, and Troxel Road and Snyder Road, counting traffic during morning and evening rush hours on school days.

The report also listed a series of road upgrades that could be needed as part of the renovations, including adding turn lanes at the school driveway on Valley Forge Road, adding a new signal at Valley Forge and Snyder, widening the intersection of Valley Forge and Sumneytown, and the possible addition of four-way stop signs or a traffic circle or roundabout at Snyder and Troxel if traffic counts permit.

Since the traffic study was presented at the start of the year, Schneider told the district’s facilities and operations committee on Monday night, one major change has been added to the plans: a new driveway, proposed to run north-south through the campus, parallel with Valley Forge Road and the adjacent North Montco Technical Career Center driveway, and meant to connect the current driveway entrance off of Snyder Road with new parking lots, to be added at the rear of the school where the district’s transportation center and bus garage are located now, then running between the current school’s athletic fields and the recently renovated Crawford Stadium to a new entry and exit on Sumneytown across from Bridle Path Drive.

Updating the study to include evaluation of the new driveway at Sumneytown and Bridle Path, and the impact to traffic at Sumneytown and Troxel, would require an amendment to the district’s contract with traffic engineers Heinrich and Klein Associates, Schneider told the committee, at an additional cost of just shy of $7,000, bringing the total cost of that contract to roughly $27,000.

School board President Tina Stoll asked if the initial contract included study of the main high school driveway onto Valley Forge Road, and/or the North Montco driveway entrance just west of the proposed new driveway, and Schneider said it included the former but not the latter.

"The idea is to have a right-turn-in and right-turn-out at that entrance, and we may need to do improvements such as widening, and having deceleration and acceleration lanes, so that’s why we have to look at Sumneytown Pike again,” Schneider said.

answered that since the firm has already provided a quote for doing the additional study, staff could seek to amend that agreement to address the referendum.

"Maybe we move it forward, under the premise that the study will not take place if the referendum does not pass. That way, come January 16th, we know one way or the other,” he said.

After the approval to expand the study was voted ahead, Schneider and Superintendent Todd Bauer also gave the committee a summary of their presentation to Towamencin Township last week, on a zoning change they’ve requested that would convert the high school site — currently split between two types of residential zoning — to institutional zoning.

Adjacent to the high school, the former WNPV radio site acquired by the district in 2020 is also zoned residential, and will likely become part of the high school parcel and included with the rezoning to institutional, according to Schneider, with that site likely to become either baseball and softball fields if the referendum passes, or multipurpose fields if it fails.

For area residents interested in touring the school prior to the vote, the district is offering public tours at 6 p.m. on Dec. 12 and Jan. 9, and a special community forum on the renovations at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 5, all at the high school, 1340 Valley Forge Road in Towamencin.

North Penn’s school board next meets at 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 4 and the facilities and operations committee next meets at 6 p.m. on Dec. 19; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.

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