Sprawl to crawl on Route 422

For thousands of commuters, U.S. Route 422 is the misery of their day.

On a particularly nasty stretch of the 25-mile-long highway that runs between Valley Forge and Amity, Berks County, rush-hour backups routinely reach eight clutch-riding, brake-wearing miles.

Jam sites at Trooper Road, St. Gabriel's Curve, and the Oaks Interchange are a regular feature of a.m. and p.m. traffic reports and cursed by those who get to work, or get home, late because of them.

With Route 422 the spine of one of the fastest-growing corridors in Southeastern Pennsylvania, land planners and traffic experts warn that without a drastic change in development and commuting habits, even rougher rides are ahead.

The search for ways to avoid that goes public next month.

On Feb. 17 and 18, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission will hold open houses in Pottstown and Oaks to solicit input from businesses, municipal officials, community and professional organizations, and anyone else with an opinion on what it would take to help make Route 422 less of an agita-provoking, business-disrupting experience.

"It's something that is desperately needed," said Tim Phelps, president of the TriCounty Area Chamber of Commerce.

His organization represents nearly 700 members from Montgomery, Chester and Berks Counties - and avoids holding breakfast meetings in the eastern half of its service area because many attendees would have to use Route 422 to get there.

What the DVRPC gathers from its outreach next month will help shape a $235,000, federally funded U.S. 422 Corridor Master Plan, which is expected to be complete this summer.

The plan will include land-use and transportation recommendations for the 236-square-mile corridor of predominantly single-use, auto-dependent development, which now has few public-transit options.

Encompassing 24 municipalities across three counties, the Route 422 corridor is home to an estimated 296,000 residents and 195,000 jobs. With roughly half the land within the corridor still undeveloped, population is expected to increase 12 percent by 2030, employment by 14 percent.

The corridor's development pattern is "classic sprawl," said Bert Cossaboon of McCormick Taylor Inc., the engineering and planning firm DVRPC has hired as a consultant on the Route 422 master plan.

"We're not beating up on the municipalities," Cossaboon said of the purpose behind the plan. "We just want to reel them in and get them to think a little bit differently - that the remaining open lands can either be preserved or developed more smartly."

The latter involves "lots of things," said Jerry Coyne, manager of transportation studies at DVRPC.

On his wish list for the corridor: high-density live/work complexes where jobs and homes could coexist in a walkable community served - as the region's Main Line towns are - by regional rail lines and buses.

On four-lane Route 422 itself, a highway completed in 1985 where average daily traffic now reaches 102,000 vehicles in spots, Coyne envisions an "express bus" with its own travel lane.

He and other experts contend that regional rail service is another must for the corridor. Norristown is as far west as SEPTA's R-6 Regional Rail Line goes.

Early next month, Montgomery County plans to release its 18-month study on the feasibility of extending the R-6 line to Reading. Chief transportation planner Leo Bagley said the idea was to "simplify" a regional rail option that has languished for more than a decade: the Schuylkill Valley Metro, at one time priced at nearly $3 billion.

How to fund it will remain a significant obstacle to actually building it or implementing any of the road improvements the Route 422 master plan might recommend.

That already has led to talk in some circles about the need for tolling along Route 422.

"That could be one of the alternatives we would advocate for . . . in order to achieve a better [transportation] system than we have now," said Rob Henry, executive director of GVFTransportation, a transportation-advocacy group for the Greater Valley Forge area.

In the meantime, businesses along Route 422 are trying to both limit their traffic impact on the highway and spare employees from it.

At pharmaceutical giant Wyeth and SEI Investments Co., just off the Route 29 and Oaks exits, respectively, a total of 6,500 employees are offered flexible work schedules and rides on company shuttles that operate between the business campuses and the rail/bus terminal in Norristown.

"When people have an easier commute," said SEI spokeswoman Dana Grosser, "they certainly start their day brighter."

Tuesday, Feb. 17

6:30 to 9 p.m.

Oaks Elementary School Cafeteria

Oaks School Drive

Oaks, Pa. 19456

Snow date: Feb. 24

Wednesday, Feb. 18

6:30 to 9 p.m.

Montgomery County Community College

Pottstown Campus, Community Room

101 College Dr.

Pottstown, Pa. 19464

Snow date: Feb. 26

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