A driver turns left through double red lights at the intersection of Welsh Road and Orvilla Road on the border of Towamencin and Hatfield townships in 2021. (MediaNews Group file photo)
$3M construction grant was announced in December
One of the area’s trickiest intersections now has the money to proceed, but the timeline remains up in the air.
Towamencin officials last week heard an update on work to widen the intersection of Welsh and Orvilla Roads starting with the “very good news that PennDOT awarded a $3 million grant for the construction phase of the project,” said traffic engineer Chad Dixson.
In May 2021 the township authorized a grant application seeking funds to design upgrades to the four-way intersection of Welsh and Orvilla, an intersection noted in a 2019 traffic study of projects that could need future upgrades including widening, and/or changes to the signal timing to improve traffic flow.
Engineering work started in spring 2022, followed by talks with property owners along the route to secure strips of property needed for the widening. Another update on the project came in March 2025, when the township’s traffic engineer outlined reasons for recent delays and said design work could be done by the end of 2025 depending on meetings with property owners over the summer; last October the board authorized contracts for appraisals and permits related to the project.
During the township supervisors meeting on Jan. 28, Dixson gave an update on developments in recent months, including the grant award by PennDOT announced by both Hatfield and Towamencin at the end of the year. Through the past summer the traffic engineer has met with residents along the route to discuss rights-of-way and temporary construction easements needed for the widening, including staking out those dimensions on site with the property owners.
Since the grant award, the engineer told the board, the traffic engineer has submitted a permit application to the state Department of Environmental Protection to spell out the stormwater improvements needed for the project.
The engineer has also hosted a project kickoff meeting with PennDOT staff and the various consultants working on the project and plan to finalize a formal grant agreement within the next few months.
“The design and permitting, we’re estimating will take another six to nine months. That will include completing the DEP permitting process, and interim and final HOP (highway occupancy permit) submissions to PennDOT,” Dixson said.
“We’re hopeful that the right-of-way and easement acquisition can be completed around the same time the design and permitting is completed, but we’ll see how those further conversations go, with the property owners,” he said.
Those acquisitions must be finalized before PennDOT can issue the highway occupancy permit needed to move ahead with the project, the engineer told the board, so no hard dates are attached to the project, but the engineer gave rough estimates.
“Once we get the highway occupancy permit from PennDOT, to put together the construction and bid documents and put the project out to bid, that’ll take about three to six months. And then once the bidding is completed, we’re estimating construction would take approximately 12 to 16 months,” he said.
“We’re hoping it could be mostly completed in one construction season. We would try and time it as best we can, so construction can begin in the spring of a particular year, so we can utilize all that time,” Dixson said.
Supervisors Chair Joyce Snyder asked if the engineer’s “best guesstimate” could see that work, best case, start in spring 2027 and construction be done during that year, and Dixson said that timeline was possible.
“Best case scenario, I would say. Could take longer,” he said.
Snyder asked if the project included any disturbance to the cemetery located on the northwest side of the intersection and Dixson said it did not, only “some minor improvements, that they requested, to the wall that goes around the corner.”
Towamencin’s supervisors next meet at 7 p.m. on Feb. 11 at the township administration building, 1090 Troxel Road. For more information visit www.Towamencin.org.
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