Monday, April 7, 2008

Finally . . . A Hollo Road Update


Image courtesy of The Morning Call.

If, you're like me, you (used to) use Hollo Road as a short cut to Route 33 and points south. As you know Hollo Road has been closed for quite some time now, and finally, today in The Morning Call their "Road Warrior" Dan Hartzell has a good write-up in today's edition:

themorningcall.com
Some places, it's Old Man Winter who puts up roadblocks

Dan Hartzell

The Road Warrior

April 7, 2008
Q: How long are developers allowed to close a public road for what appears to be their own convenience? Hollo Road between Van Buren Road and Route 248 in Lower Nazareth and Palmer townships has been closed since July. It appears they completed upgrading the intersection at 248 last year, but haven't done anything at Hollo/Van Buren for many months. Why is a private company allowed to take control of a public road and close it for an extended time? Why does their convenience overrule that of the public? Kris Tavasz

Q: Can you tell me if Hollo Road between 248 and Van Buren Road in Palmer Township is going to be reopened? It has been closed for construction for many months and now it seems road has disappeared altogether. Since Hollo closed, Van Buren traffic has picked up tremendously, making especially the Northwood Road intersection hazardous. Pat Stanek

A:Problems regarding engineering approvals for a ''box culvert,'' a concrete structure that will carry the new, improved Hollo Road over Schoeneck Creek just west of Van Buren, put the brakes on progress, Kris and Pat.

As part of the ProLogis warehouse park being built between Route 248 and Hollo and Van Buren roads, Hollo was closed for widening, repaving, straightening and other improvements. Most of the park is in Lower Nazareth, but part of it, as well as a western segment of Hollo Road, is in Palmer.

Lower Nazareth Manager Timm Tenges said the portion of Hollo in his township is completed, so the holdup must be on the Palmer side. His understanding was that the road was supposed to be open by the start of the school year last September.

Palmer Manager Robert Anckaitis acknowledged that progress was delayed by problems between the township's project engineers and ProLogis's engineers regarding design details, calculations and exchanges of information over the box culvert. That was confirmed by ProLogis spokeswoman Melissa Sheehan.

Anckaitis doubts the road ever could have been open by September, but in any event, because of the culvert delays, winter arrived before work could be finished -- always a setback, because asphalt and concrete normally cannot be installed in cold weather. So, as with many road projects, everything had to wait for this year's construction season to arrive, which is just about now.

Anckaitis could not be more specific than to say the road should be open ''sometime this summer,'' folks, so if we hope for July, Hollo will have been closed for a year.

That's pretty long for a road of this kind, though as you mentioned in your e-mails, Kris, the roughly 1.5-mile detour you take on Van Buren to access Route 248 isn't so bad.

Normally, developers, municipalities and their respective engineers and contractors try to complete road improvements as quickly as possible, and certainly within one spring-to-fall construction season, Tenges and Anckaitis agreed. It just didn't work out that way in this case.


You can read the article in it's entirety here.

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