Surrounded by woods and straddling a sparkling lake, Bear Creek Village is one of Luzerne County’s smallest and most picturesque municipalities.
It also straddles one of the county’s most dangerous stretches of highway.
State Route 115 cuts through the borough on a series of blind, hilly curves, with a center lane for traffic turning off the busy thoroughfare to reach homes and businesses on either side.
Residents say the simple act of trying to turn off and onto Route 115 feels like taking their lives into their hands, as impatient or inattentive drivers often swoop into the center turning lane to pass slower drivers.
“I'm one of those who has to get in the middle or turning lane to get into the road leading to my home,” said Mayor Walter Mitchell, who has held the post for 31 years. “I can't tell you the number of times when my heart has stopped beating out of fear that a car is coming down the middle lane.”
Nearly $490,000 in state grant funding, announced this week, will help fund a project designed to make the road safer for local residents and those who travel the highway over longer distances every day. It will cover a significant portion of the total project cost, which is expected to be about $700,000. Mitchell said the borough expects to cover the balance by seeking grants from other agencies.
Those improvements will include:
• A right turn deceleration lane and intersection improvements at Beaupland Road.
• Restriping the lanes over the Bear Creek Bridge to add a deceleration lane onto White Haven Road and adjust the intersection away from the bridge to improve the right turn.
• Shoulder widening and sidewalk improvement for the right turn at West Lake Road.
• Grading and brush clearing to improve sight distance at West Lake Road.
Officials said there is no firm timeline for when the project will begin but were expecting it would be “coming soon.”
“I won’t make any predictions because I know engineers get very nervous when I do that,” state Sen. Dave Argall, R-Rush Township added during a gathering to talk about the funding this week.
‘They speed through the village’
While the borough is home only to about 300 people, that 1-mile stretch of Route 115 carries thousands of vehicles each day with nine roads intersecting the highway.
And despite a 45-mph speed limit in the heart of the village, residents and officials say a state Department of Transportation study recorded drivers going as fast as 76 mph.
“Route 115 is a major artery between the Wyoming Valley and the Poconos and beyond. There are many people who are still commuting every day, to New York City and back,” Mitchell said. “And believe me, at the end of the day, their patience is really worn thin. And you can tell that by how fast they speed through the village.”
Former borough council president John Parsons has witnessed the consequences.
“I've seen a number of collisions. There have been fatalities out here. And it's scary,” said Parsons, who lives near the highway.
“Sometimes you hear it before you see it,” he added. “And whenever you hear that big crash, boom, you know, you're really fearing for whoever was involved.”
Told that statistics show dozens of collisions in recent years, both Parsons and Mitchell suggested official records likely miss the bigger picture.
“What about the near misses? What about those that nobody knows about?” Mitchell asked. “And if you extrapolate those out, for as far back as there has been 115 and been a turning lane, well, you can imagine what those figured are gonna look like. They'd be astounding.”
Parsons said Charles Katcavage, a longtime resident and the borough’s safety coordinator, recently showed him a scrapbook with some enlightening 1950s newspaper clippings.
“There was an article in there that called this section of roadway, a death trap. So, you know, this has been going on for a long, long time,” Parsons said.
Bipartisan support
State Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-Wilkes Barre, and Sen. Argall visited the village clubhouse on Tuesday to talk with residents and local officials about the grant and proposed improvements.
“Engineering consultants recently completed a speed study on Route 115 and confirmed that developing a safer road design was warranted, Pashinski said. The grant funding being presented today is for a completely new design and restructuring of that main intersection and roadway.”
“Once these upgrades are complete, this location on State Route 115 will be safer for both drivers and residents,” Argall said. “This project has been a top priority for Bear Creek Village Borough officials. I’m thankful Representative Pashinski and I were able to work together with them to secure this highly competitive state funding.”
“In today’s political climate, we see both sides of the table here, sitting side-by-side, that came together to really help the people that they represent,” Argall said.
The $489,536 grant was awarded from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development’s Commonwealth Finance Authority Multimodal Grant Funding.
“It’s a team effort. We met well over eight, 10 months ago, and began investigating everything, doing onsite visits, meeting with people, to understand exactly what the complexity is relative to that intersection,” Pashinski said of himself and Argall.
“And then we realized you just can’t put up some signs, you can’t just have a couple flashing lights. It needs new construction. The design has to change.”
Mayor Mitchell said that the grant funding will go a long way toward making that happen.
“Today, to look at almost $500,000 as a single grant, which is about two-and-a-half times our annual budget, it’s just astounding,” he said. “We’re at a point now that we can make major changes from a safety standpoint, that on our own would never have been possible.”
