An engineering firm studying traffic patterns ahead of a planned Interstate-83 improvement project may have found a way to reduce its footprint, eliminating the need to expand a portion of the highway to 12 lanes in Harrisburg.
That’s according to Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, who on Tuesday shared an “interim report” related to an ongoing evaluation of a stretch of I-83 that passes through the city.
It’s a stretch that Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials have eyed for expansion as they plan for increased traffic over the next few decades. And it’s that expansion that has troubled city officials, who found fault with early drafts of the plan that show it could require construction atop land currently occupied by dozens of business and property owners.
At a recent meeting, PennDOT officials seemed to suggest they’d be willing to consider city concerns when it comes to a final design, Papenfuse said.
“There has been good dialogue with discussion, and we’re hopeful that this will be able to impact the final designs for the project in a way that saves taxpayers money and minimizes the impact on our residents,” Papenfuse said.
To better make their case, a majority of Harrisburg City Council members voted in June to enter into a $72,000 contract with engineers at Kittelson & Associates Inc. to conduct a traffic analysis of the area. Officials hope it will show that the PennDOT project’s proposed footprint can be reduced.
The PennDOT plan, which was announced last year, would take the highway to 12 lanes along much of its path through the city. At other points, I-83 would be widened to only eight lanes.
The expansion is intended to separate mainline traffic from local traffic, making it easier and safer for local drivers to merge onto and off of the interstate while also alleviating traffic congestion and improving safety on the Capital Beltway.
That goal would be achieved in part by the widening, as well as creating a new interchange at Cameron Street in Harrisburg while eliminating a number of other existing interchanges, according to early PennDOT plans.
Papenfuse said the Kittelson & Associates analysis of I-83 is scheduled to be complete by Oct. 21. After that date, it’s likely that Kittelson engineers will appear before council to present their findings, he said.
On Tuesday, the mayor gave a preview of those findings, calling it an “interim report."
It was a report that city engineer Wayne Martin said showed the project’s footprint could be reduced, likely by two lanes. That means, at its widest, I-83 would expand to 10 instead of 12 lanes as it passes through Harrisburg, the early findings show. At other points, six lanes would suffice, Papenfuse said.
After the meeting, Martin explained that this would be achieved through intelligent design of on and off ramps, as well as the realignment of a portion of Paxton Street between 13th and 17th streets.
That’s in addition to looking at other rights-of-way adjacent to the I-83 corridor to ensure that issues like bicycle and pedestrian access and safety are not ignored, Martin said.
The Kittelson & Associates analysis also will delve into those issues, though that component of the study will not be finished until about mid-December, Papenfuse said.
PennDOT officials are now in the process of preparing a final design for the Harrisburg portion of their I-83 Capital Beltway project — a multi-year, multi-contract project that is expected to cost upward of $1 billion, according to PennDOT District 8 spokesman Mike Crochunis.
Crochunis said PennDOT designers will take the report from Kittelson and city officials into consideration.
“We are always looking at minimizing the footprint of design,” he said.
With that said, PennDOT officials are not required to make any design changes. Still, Papenfuse said he remains hopeful that the footprint will be reduced.
“PennDOT is committed to doing what it can to minimize the footprint,” the mayor said, relaying what he was told at the recent meeting with state officials. “They are still evaluating the preliminary findings from Kittelson.”
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