After decades of complaints and years of cutting through a thicket of bureaucratic regulations, big rigs and heavy tri-axle trucks will be banned from driving through a residential neighborhood on South Pennsylvania Avenue in Morrisville.
The long-awaited news came Thursday morning when state Sen. Steve Santarsiero, D-10 of Lower Makefield, stood at the corner of S. Pennsylvania and Cleveland avenues with PennDOT rep Francis J. Hanney, Mayor Gary Wallace, Council President Helen Hlahol, and police Chief Rich Ciampa, along with a handful of neighbors.
"Trucks ought not to be taking Pennsylvania Avenue," Santarsiero said, sometimes having to shout over the roar of passing tractor trailers.
Hanney, a district executive with PennDOT, gave the reason for the truck restrictions: "Due to the pavement structure, that we are able to institute a truck prohibition, from Philadelphia Avenue down through Falls Township for all vehicles over 10 tons."
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Why the restriction on Morrisville's South Pennsylvania Avenue?
At least since the late 1980s, residents in and around S. Pennsylvania Avenue, a blue-collar middle-class neighborhood known as "The Manor," have complained about the big rig traffic, noise, exhaust pollution and speeding.
They attended council meetings to say they wanted to ban large trucks, which rumble along the two-lane street toward an industrial area of Falls Township, which now includes the sprawling Keystone Trade Center and the county's deep water river port. The all-hours truck traffic, with loud exhausts and shrieking brakes, has caused cracked windows, ceilings and walls in homes along the street.
Children at play are vulnerable, as are vehicles parked at curbside, residents and officials say.
The port-based trade center (formerly the U.S. Steel Fairless Works) will expand as what is now known as NorthPoint industrial site, bringing up to 10 million square feet of new warehouses, worsening the traffic situation. Last winter, residents packed a council meeting seeking relief.
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When does the South Pennsylvania Avenue truck ban take effect?
Hanney said that PennDOT will make and post the signs announcing the restrictions.
"We have put in the orders for the signs," he said. "We hope to have them fabricated and our crews ... will be doing the installation. We hope to have it done by Halloween, but we have full confidence it will be done by Thanksgiving."
Chief Ciampa said additional patrols will be sent to the street to enforce the restrictions with warnings and fines.
Truckers will take Route 1 to Route 13 to Tyburn Road to the port area, or be stopped and fined.
Why did it take so long?
Bureaucracy. It took concerted efforts of state and local officials 10 years to this point, most of it in the last three years. It came incrementally, with speed restrictions along sections of the street in 2021, and a crucial change to dense language, with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission switching the street's designation from "intermodal corridor" to "major collector."
This allows "traffic calming" measures to restrict and slow truck traffic. Another change was to Google Maps, which defaults to S. Pennsylvania as the preferred route to Keystone Trade Center and the port.
Hlahol, who lives in the neighborhood, said the council will pass an ordinance listing the restrictions. She said the key concern brought to PennDOT's attention was that the street has a gas and water lines not far beneath the macadam surface, making them susceptible to damage.
"Even when the steel mill was open, we never had this much truck traffic," she said. "If you go further down this road, you see it's actually sinking. So, I think they finally realized that it just can't handle all this additional weight."
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JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@couriertimes.com.
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