Lansdale’s Long-awaited East Main Streetscape Could be Bid in Spring

Dan Sokil | The Reporter•

Traffic engineer Mark Bickerton of Pennoni & Associates shows Lansdale’s borough council a concept for upgrades along “Phase 2” of the borough’s plann

2024 could bring shovels in the ground in a long-discussed streetscape project on Main Street in Lansdale.

Council members heard an update on the East Main streetscape project, including a possible start of work soon.

"We’re here to report that we’re ready go out to bid, and get this into construction,” said traffic engineer Earl Armitage.

The town’s East Main Streetscape project has been planned since 2014, when the town secured roughly $3 million in grant funding for the project on the heels of two similar projects that upgraded utilities and replaced old sidewalks with new brick and pavers on downtown Main, Broad and Madison Streets in 2011-12, then along Wood and Vine Streets in 2013-14.

Over the next several years, plans were developed and refined to add similar sidewalks and utility upgrades running east along Main from Broad Street to just past the North Penn Commons complex near Highland Road, and plans were presented in October 2020, then updated in summer 2021 and again that December. In 2022 the engineer reported that final designs have been reviewed and vetted by SEPTA and PennDOT for the two phases of the project, the first centered on the street running past the train station at Main Street to Broad and the second phase from Broad to Highland Road; in early 2023, the engineers said the work would likely be delayed until early 2024 due to SEPTA gate replacement work at the Main Street crossing.

That SEPTA gate work is now complete, Armitage and engineer Mark Bickerton told council on Jan. 17, clearing the way for next steps to happen quickly.

Safer for Pedestrians

At the intersection of Main with the railroad tracks, the engineer has worked with SEPTA and PennDOT to finalize plans for new sidewalks on the south side of Main, running across the four rail lines, between the intersection of Main and Railroad Avenue and the now-former Rite Aid driveway on the opposite side of the tracks.

"There’s simply nothing there for pedestrians, yet they cross there all the time. The original focus was to try to keep them on the other side, but we obviously have sidewalks on both sides of the road, so pedestrians are everywhere,” he said.

New crosswalk striping will be added across Main from Railroad Avenue to Railroad Plaza to the north, along Main from Railroad Avenue to the Rite Aid "basically mirroring what’s on the other side of the road,” Armitage said, and SEPTA has also, at the borough’s urging, agreed to add pedestrian signal arms to block the way of anyone trying to cross while the gate arms are down for car traffic.

"SEPTA has agreed to take some funding that they had for another project, reallocate it to Lansdale Borough, and put in the pedestrian gates as part of this project. We were all very happy to hear that,” Armitage said.

New crosshatched striping will be added on the roadway along the four rail lines to prevent cars from stopping on the tracks, similar to what’s in place now at the Fortuna station in Hatfield just a few stops up the line.

"Usually you have one track crossing, here we have four. So it really helps to identify to the motorist, exactly where the gates are going to come down and where the tracks are. It’s just another way of reinforcing, ‘This is not where you want to stop your car,'” he said.

Working in Stages

New porous pavement will also be added along the new sidewalks, to allow water to be absorbed below tree pits while providing a stable surface for pedestrians, and new delineators and pedestrian crossing signs will be added at the rail crossing. On the second phase between Broad and Highland, plans call for new curbing, sidewalk and drainage upgrades to be added ahead of a planned paving project that PennDOT agreed to postpone until the work is done.

"Our project will go this year, and then next year PennDOT’s going to come through and put a nice new surface on our entire area of Main Street,” Armitage said. "At the parallel crossings, we’re mirrored what’s been done throughout the borough, with the stamped asphalt crosswalks – they’re not brick, they’re actually stamped asphalt, very good for long-term maintenance, they just last a lot longer.”

Along Memorial Park on the "suburban” section of the project, new curbs and sidewalks will be installed, with the borough’s electric department adding conduits and junction boxes to allow for streetlights to be added later on. A total of 28 properties needed to sign on so their driveways could be upgraded, Armitage told council, and all of those approvals have now been secured "to essentially upgrade their driveways to meet all the ADA standards.”

Drainage upgrades including pipes and inlets will also be added that should reduce flooding in that area, and near the North Penn Commons complex on the 600 block of East Main, a lone corner apron will finally be connected to new sidewalks running along Main, the engineer said. The latest plans now call for the phase between Broad and the SEPTA station to be done in 2025 by the rail agency, while the phase from Broad east to the Commons complex should happen this year.

"We’re ready to go. We’re ready to advertise this now. PennDOT’s going to issue us our (highway occupancy) permit this month, so we’ll have that in hand. We’re looking to have the (contract) award in March to a contractor, notice to proceed at the beginning of April,” he said.

Construction Timeline

Once the contract is awarded, materials can be ordered and delivered, then construction on the streetscape could start as soon as this summer, and would likely run for what the engineer called "one construction season” with a goal of completing it by the end of the year, then PennDOT paving the roadway in 2025.

Updated cost estimates put the phase near the train station at a cost of roughly $300,000 to be covered by SEPTA, while the eastern phase between Broad and the Commons is estimated to cost just below $3.5 million, depending on the bid results; the $2.7 million in grant funding would be matched by roughly $812,000 in borough funds to equal that total of $3.5 million, the engineer said.

"We want to be careful with the bids, because you never know how a project is going to be bid, so we’re going to structure the bid in a way that once the bids come in — I know this was a concern of (borough staff) — we’re able to adjust the scope of work, so that we don’t exceed that amount,” Armitage said.

"We’re very happy to be at this point, where we’re ready to get this thing out on the street, and put a shovel in the ground,” he said.

A Long Time Coming

Council President Mary Fuller said she’d been waiting to see the streetscape finished for much of her 14 years on council, and councilman Rich DiGregorio asked if the work would include upgrades to existing traffic signals, such as those on Main at Broad and Line streets. Armitage said his firm is working with the borough to identify ways that traffic signals triggered by underground detection systems can be replaced with cameras above the intersections instead, and such signal upgrades could follow once the streetscape work is done.

Councilman BJ Breish asked if the engineer knew the life expectancy and maintenance costs of the new stripes, delineators, and porous pavement to be added near the station, and Armitage said those tactics and materials were chosen with those long-term costs in mind. Breish then asked if the striping within the rails would become the borough’s responsibility to maintain afterwards, and borough Manager John Ernst said that would likely fall to the rail agency: "I can’t imagine that they would allow borough employees to go into a train right-of-way to be painting;” Armitage said those specifics are being detailed in maintenance agreements that will be finalized before going out to bid.

Breish then asked if the project included changes to the left turn lane for drivers heading westbound on Main at Broad, where drivers often swing into an oncoming traffic lane to bypass stopped traffic in the through lane and cut into a short left-turn lane. Armitage said extending that left turn lane is part of the project, but will be done when PennDOT repaves the roadway in 2025 after the sidewalks and drainage upgrades are done.

"When they repave this road, at the end of this project, they’re going to put in a longer left turn lane,” he said, "and PennDOT did support that, because they said that’s basically how it operates now.”

Mayor Garry Herbert asked if the installation of flexible delineators in the rail crossing would be similar to those recently installed on Broad Street north of Main near the Rita’s Water Ice shop, and asked if those could also be installed on Main at Wood Street near the Philly Pretzel Factory shop and Main Street Pizza, where drivers pull over into what is not a formal parking space. Ernst said staff would work with the traffic engineer "to find out what we can do” there.

Next steps, according to the manager, include vetting the updated budget and project cost estimates, reviewing the grant and matching funds, and returning to council and its committees in February for further talks and a possible vote to go to bid.

"If in fact the bids come back higher than we anticipate, we’ll be looking at ways to take the project and put it on a diet, or value-engineer it, to make sure we get the best bang for the grant dollars that we can,” Ernst said.

Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 7 with various council committees starting at 6:30 p.m., all at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.

This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between North Penn Now and The Reporter. To read more stories like this, visit www.thereporteronline.com.