As summer heats up, Honesdale officials ask drivers to slow down and stay cool while behind the wheel.
Borough leadership, officials from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), Senator Rosemary Brown’s office and motor safety advocates gathered on Main Street to promote pedestrian awareness after the borough started seeing an uptick in accidents.
Sandi Levens said there were three pedestrian accidents in recent months. She wanted to take action before Honesdale’s summer activities kick off. Levens is the executive director of the Greater Honesdale Partnership (GHP), the community’s economic development organization.
“We have the Roots and Rhythm Festival coming up this weekend. We have the fireworks celebration in downtown Honesdale on July 1,” said Levens. “So, it just brings so many more people, so many more cars into town. So, it did work out that it’s a perfect time to bring this up to the community and make them understand the importance [of pedestrian safety.]”
Roots and Rhythm is Honesdale’s music festival, bringing free jazz, blues and Americana music into town each year. Mayor Derek Williams estimates thousands of music lovers will travel to Honesdale for the show.
He worries drivers will treat Honesdale’s streets like a highway. Williams said Main Street is built like one with its two one-way lanes that make it easy for drivers to cut in front of slower drivers and drive dangerously fast.
Williams asked state legislators to take action by passing legislation that would allow borough police to use radar guns for speed violations. Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation that doesn’t allow local police to use radar. Only state troopers can use radar guns in Pennsylvania.
But Honesdale’s taking steps to make drivers slow down.
Williams celebrated the borough’s progress in finalizing its Streetscapes plan, which he hopes will make speeding drivers hit the brakes. Borough officials want to renovate eight blocks of Main Street, from 4th to 12th Street.
One of the biggest changes will reduce the number of downtown parallel parking spots from 120 to 80. Williams said it will improve crosswalk sight lines.
“But almost everywhere on Main and Church Street where we have a crosswalk, that upstream parking spot is kind of blocking a clear sight triangle that makes it really uncomfortable [to see traffic and pedestrians]. And that’s super tough,” said Williams. “Because when you’re driving, you don’t see people until they’re kind of already in the road. And when you’re walking, it’s the same conditions.”
He added that the borough also plans to build “bump-outs” on the edges of intersections to slow down traffic entering and leaving Main Street.
“Imagine the sidewalk being extended out into the road about the distance of the parking spot that will then kind of, from the driver’s perspective, ‘pinch’ the street a little bit so the visual is totally different. It doesn’t feel like a highway anymore,” said Williams. “And it also adds significant visibility for the pedestrian…before they even have to enter the roadway.”
The plan is in the engineering and design stages. Williams hopes to see construction start sometime in the next year.
GHP’s Sandi Levens said construction should cost around $8 million. PennDOT is contributing $1.3 million from its Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside (TASA) fund to jumpstart construction. The state Department of Community and Economic Development is providing $450,000 from its Multimodal Transportation Fund, which finances transportation renovation.
For more information on borough developments, visit the Greater Honesdale Partnership’s website.
