EASTON, Pa. (WLVT) - In the heart of the city, Centre Square draws locals and visitors year-round. Driving around the square has posed a challenge for some motorists, and pedestrians admit they take caution as they walk to Centre Square Park. The City of Easton and PennDOT are looking at ways to make travel less troubling.
Diane Haviland and Ken Greene live on Centre Square. They say they’ve got a great view, but sometimes, it’s a bit more alarming to watch.
"Obviously, a lot of people cannot navigate that square," Haviland said. "We've seen many potential misses that could have happened and accidents and, just watching right out our window, we can see them time and time again, and it's very concerning."
The Easton Farmers Market attracts people to the park. Some say just walking to get there is tricky.
"Some folks just don't abide by the stoplight, and you're stuck waiting to see what's happening -- or you're in the middle of the intersection, and the cars go," said Anthony Marraccini, a downtown resident and the owner of Connexions Gallery a few blocks from Centre Square. "It's just not a very pedestrian-friendly space.”
David Hopkins, Easton's public works director, said the city has been working on making changes for the past ten years, raising four million dollars in grants.
"It's an iconic space. We have a wonderful opportunity to upgrade it, and I think ultimately our job is to make sure we achieve the best outcome possible," he said.
This week, city officials and PennDOT invited the public to check out two projects. The city is working on updating the park, while PennDOT is working on traffic. They’re using the same engineer, Pennoni Associates, based in Bethlehem.
"This is a unique project to us, because we focus a lot on vehicular traffic, and this project, we're really focusing on pedestrian and bicycle safety," noted Earl Armitage, Pennoni's transportation division manager for the Lehigh Valley.
The traffic project has two parts: Centre Square itself and what’s called the “ring road” around it. That includes Second, Spring Garden, Ferry and Fourth streets. The goal is to make all of them open to two-way traffic.
"We've seen what's going on with Fourth street and how that's been made much more accessible by traffic," Greene said, "and to do that to the other streets just makes perfect sense."
"Opening up the ring roads is going to really increase the ability for people to get around," added Jim Bloom, who lives in the city's West Ward neighborhood. "That's always a problem when there's events."
Mayor Sal Panto said he’s in favor of the ring road changes, but he pointed out an issue while talking about the project at an event Wednesday at Lehigh Valley Public Media.
"We're going to lose parking spaces, because the state law is 30 feet from the corner, but yet our buildings are only 10 feet from the corner," he said. "The buildings in downtown are up to the sidewalk. So, it's not the car that's causing a sight distance problem. It's the building. You're not going to tear down buildings."
The other part of the traffic project looks at Centre Square itself. Some of the options include narrowing the lanes, reducing them to one, closing a quadrant or closing just Northampton Street.
"I was keen on the one where it went down to a single lane. It didn't seem to be difficult, as long as the fire trucks could manage through it," Marraccini said, "but it would slow down traffic, and it would make the the distance crossing the street much shorter, so that it would be safer for people to get across the street.”
"We need to really accommodate more pedestrians," Haviland said. "It is a park, and people really love sitting out there."
As for the park, specific details on how to improve it will depend on what happens to the traffic around it.
"It's our responsibility to use a lot of care in the design and rehabilitation," Hopkins said. "I just think it's a wonderful gathering space...and I think it's a real jewel for downtown residents to come out and enjoy."
Both projects will take about a year to design. The goal is to complete PennDOT's project by June 2022.
In the meantime, the City and PennDOT want community feedback. Armitage said nothing has been finalized.
Anyone who would like to offer feedback can contact the following people:
Rodney Rehnert (PennDOT District 5-0 Project Manager)
1002 Hamilton Street, Allentown, PA 18101
610-871-4562
rrehnert@pa.gov
Earl Armitage III (Pennoni Project Manager)
2041 Avenue C, Bethlehem, PA 18017
610-231-0600
earmitage@pennoni.com