Township urged to press PennDOT on dangerous US‑322 intersection; engineer recommends staged safety fixes

Residents and board members urged Harris Township to act after repeated crashes — including a recent fatality — at the US‑322 Bowl Avenue intersection with Bear Meadows Road/Elks Club Road.

A board member who has led the push described multiple recent accidents and said PennDOT previously advised a township letter is the first step toward any change. The board invited Rob Watts of McCormick Taylor to brief them on the site’s crash history and the procedural and technical steps required for a traffic signal.

Watts said the intersection is "one of the most challenging" in the region because of heavy truck traffic (he said roughly 1 in 5 vehicles there is a truck) and the geometry of the approaches. He explained that federal or PennDOT signal warrants typically require high side‑street volumes (he cited a ballpark threshold of about 75 side‑street vehicles per hour) and that counts he’d seen were generally in the 40–50 range — below typical signal warrants. Watts advised the board to request a formal safety review and data collection from the PennDOT district traffic engineer (Eric Brown) and suggested the township ask PennDOT to consider a menu of responses: repainting stop bars, adding active warning devices such as flashing overhead signs or speed feedback signs, installing red‑signal‑ahead warning systems for large vehicles, or other incremental mitigations if a full signal is not warranted.

Board members and residents pressed on intermediate measures (flashing advance warning lights, speed‑feedback signs, painted speed markings) and on cost and ownership questions. Watts cautioned that a full traffic signal would likely be a township project to install and maintain unless included in a larger PennDOT project; he estimated a full signal in that footprint could cost $300,000–$400,000 and require long cycle lengths that could increase rear‑end crashes on the mainline. He and others suggested documenting crash history in a formal letter to PennDOT and asking for their counts or a warrant study; staff recommended writing to the district traffic engineer and requesting a detailed safety review and available traffic counts.

The board did not approve a specific capital project at the meeting but directed staff to prepare a draft letter to PennDOT requesting evaluation and potential short‑term safety treatments while monitoring longer‑term corridor projects (SCAC connector) expected in future years.