What’s the 422?

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission held the first of its two area “open house” meetings last night, and the message the multistate body had for attendees can be reduced to a few main points:

They know Route 422 is congested.

A major project to increase the passenger vehicle capacity of Route 422 is not affordable under current funding projections.

If nothing is done, the situation will be much, much worse by 2030.

Other options, including but not limited to expansions of mass transit service, must be considered.

Between 100 and 150 area residents, as well as numerous employees and officials from local municipalities, attended the meeting at Oaks Elementary School. While awaiting a slide presentation, they perused a collection of maps and charts that illustrated the growth of the Route 422 corridor from its 1985 inception.

Jerry Coyne, manager of transportation studies for the DVRPC, told the audience that the meeting was intended to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas between the people who live and work along the highway and the planning commission, which serves as a conduit for federal transportation funds that come into the region.

“No decisions or formal plans have been made whatsoever,” Coyne said.

According to the DVRPC and its engineering firm, McCormick Taylor, peak traffic volume on Route 422 during 2008 was between 70 and 100 percent of capacity between the Royersford/Trappe interchange and the Trooper Road interchange. From Trooper Road to the Route 202/I-76 interchange, traffic volume exceeded capacity.

If suburban growth patterns along the corridor maintain their current trends, in 2030, traffic will exceed capacity as far west as Route 113, DVRPC data shows. The area of 70-100 percent capacity will extend west from Route 113 to Route 100 in Pottstown.

Bert Cossaboon of McCormick Taylor said the project’s scope encompasses 24 municipalities between King of Prussia and the Berks County line. According to Cossaboon, there is no way for the highway’s capacity to keep pace with current growth trends in that area without “great new funding sources” that don’t currently exist. That would seem to rule out large-scale improvements, such as a third lane along the entire Montgomery County portion of the highway.

The alternative growth strategies presented by McCormick Taylor focus largely on mass transit options, such as extending the SEPTA R6 line westward from Norristown. One of the more dramatic proposals in this vein is a Bus Rapid Transit park & ride lot that would be built in the wide median of Route 422 just west of the Oaks interchange.

In tandem with mass transit initiatives, the plan would seek to encourage municipalities to centralize future growth in “mixed-use developments” that are said to be more conducive to bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Phoenixville’s downtown revitalization project was frequently cited as a local example.

“We’re not beating up on the municipalities. We just want to reel them in and get them to think a little bit differently,” Cossaboon told the Philadelphia Inquirer last month.

Notable for its absence from the presentation was the idea of highway tolls, a prospect mentioned in the Inquirer article. Cossaboon told the Greater Valley Forge Transportation Management Association in September that tolling was under consideration as a funding method.

Tonight’s second and final “open house” will begin at 6:30pm at the Pottstown campus of Montgomery County Community College. Maps, charts, and other project documents can be downloaded and viewed at the web site of the US Route 422 Corridor Coalition.