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Resident warns $57 million interchange project will worsen local traffic, asks borough to reevaluate role
Summary
A long-time Franklin Park resident and transportation planner told council a state-funded interchange project on I‑79 will shift congestion to the borough’s west side and urged the borough to reassess its participation after learning the borough contributed funds.
A Franklin Park resident told borough council that a state interchange project on Interstate 79 will worsen local traffic and asked the council to reevaluate the borough’s role after he obtained records through right-to-know requests.
"This project that just got started is going to be a disaster for the Franklin Park Borough residents," said Satish Jindal, who identified himself at the meeting as a resident since 1994 with a master’s degree in transportation and city planning. "They are shifting the traffic problem from the east side of 79 to the west side and it's going to be worse."
Jindal told council he had obtained documents and emails via a Right-to-Know request and said the project — which he described as a $57,000,000 effort funded with federal, state and borough dollars — will create bottlenecks on Nicholson Road and nearby access points. He pointed to a short distance between the Nicholson Road traffic light and the I‑79 ramp and said multiple commercial driveways and u-turns already disrupt traffic flow.
Jindal asked the council to "reevaluate our role in this," saying the borough had previously told him the work was a state project in which the borough had no involvement. He said RTK materials showed Franklin Park contributed more than $100,000 to the effort and that the project, as designed, would not increase capacity but would relocate congestion to different approaches.
Council members did not take formal action on the remark during the meeting. The resident also raised questions about a subdivision (Reserve at Swickley Hills) and its potential access impacts for nearby Blackburn Heights residents; he asked that information about street access be shared with neighbors so they can consider next steps.
Why it matters: If accurate, the resident’s claims point to possible local traffic and property-value effects from a major highway interchange redesign. Council members said the project had been described to them as a state project in prior communications, although this resident said the borough had contributed funding. The transcript records the resident’s concerns and a request for additional information; it does not record any council decision or technical review in response.
No council staff presentation or engineering report addressing those claims was recorded in the meeting minutes; the resident referenced public hearings held online in 2021 and asked for in-person hearings that he said were previously denied because of COVID-19.
