Street and sidewalk improvements in Scranton aim to make the city more pedestrian friendly and calm traffic.
At a public meeting about the project, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti asked the audience to have an open mind.
“We want traffic to be calmer and safer so that we can all have a safer city and have more confidence as we continue to grow and invest in the city," she said.
The public meeting on the project was held at Lackawanna College on Thursday. Engineers Tom Reilly Jr. and Paul Menichello, from Reilly Associations, the city's engineering firm, gave the presentation on the next steps to design and build the connectivity plan.
Passionate residents expressed their concerns to engineers and city officials. Others welcomed the changes.
The streetscape plan is a combination of five different projects, mostly in the downtown area. It creates more visible crosswalks, upgrades sidewalks, adds more lighting and trees and adds bike lanes. It reduces the size of lanes on roads and availability of on-street parking spaces.
The plan changes some one-way streets to two-ways, which Menichello said could divert and spread out traffic in the downtown.
The plan also removes 16 downtown traffic lights and replaces them with stop signs. That drew the most frustration from some of the around 30 residents in the audience.
Derek Raines is legally blind. He's grateful the city is attempting to make it easier to walk in the downtown.
"We would just like something that ... we can push the button and it'll say 'go, stop'," he said. "We're not going to have that, so a lot of people are just going to be afraid of getting hit by a car."
The engineers said crosswalks will be improved and made more visible and noted that pedestrians have the right of way.
John Pocius is an engineer and former city council member.
"We can take a signal out and put a four way stop sign ... which means four individuals have to make a decision on who's gonna go first," he said.
Pocius sees a lot of good in the overall plan but said if the traffic lights are removed it would be costly to replace them in the future.
Others at the meeting questioned the studies behind removing the lights and worried about how people with vision issues would get around the city without sound cues.
Zain Rabbani is the director of Fixed Route Operations for the County of Lackawanna Transit System (COLTS).
"This project looks very exciting from just a rerouting perspective, because our buses are gonna be more accessible to more passengers," said Rabbani. "It's going to help us out a lot."
Residents also asked the engineers and the city to improve other parts of Scranton, like the city's south side. A portion of Main Avenue in West Scranton is also included in the streetscape plan. Called the West Side Gateway Project, it's expected to be completed by summer 2025.
PennDOT is also working on other road upgrades in the city.
Urban planner and author Jeff Speck studied Scranton’s traffic patterns for a year. Former Mayor Wayne Evans introduced Speck to the city in 2018.
Speck and city officials released the Downtown Scranton Connectivity Plan last summer. Reilly Associates took Speck’s ideas for Scranton and crafted them more for the city’s needs.
The more than $15 million project is a combination of state and federal funds. City council still has to approve the plan. The city also applied for a $10 million grant for a pending project on Lackawanna and Mifflin Avenues and Vine Street.
Another public meeting will be scheduled.
