Centre County bustling with transportation projects

In Pennsylvania, summer means construction.

And that is certainly true for Centre County.

In Centre County, the Metropolitan Planning Organization works in partnership with the state Department of Transportation to help prioritize projects and arrange funding, said Tom Zilla, principal transportation planner for Centre Regional Planning Agency.

Some CCMPO and PennDOT projects either under construction or upcoming include:

Ongoing projects

▪  PennDOT is replacing the bridge that spans Slab Cabin Run on East Branch Road, which will allow it to remove the bridge from Centre County’s structurally deficient list.

The estimated completion date is the end of September, Zilla said.

It has a construction cost of $1.85 million, he said.

▪  Work on South Atherton Street focusing on the bridge that spans Slab Cabin Run is nearing completion.

PennDOT spokeswoman Marla Fannin said there was more rehab needed at the bridge than initially anticipated.

Work is expected to be finished by the end of the week, she said, but that could change.

▪  The Waddle Road bridge project is wrapping up after several years of work.

Zilla said the project is essentially complete, with just the paving on the approaches being done now.

Final completion will be sometime in August, he said.

The construction cost is $14.6 million.

Upcoming projects

▪  The third and final stage of the Potters Mills Gap project is scheduled to be bid in early 2018, with a construction estimate of just less than $107 million.

A bridge was built during the first stage of construction, and the second stage is expected to be completed in the fall, connecting the bridge and building an interchange at Sand Mountain Road, Zilla said.

The third stage will build several more miles of four-lane road on a new alignment around the nose of the mountain, which is slated to start in early 2018, he said.

It’s “by far the highest-cost project in the county,” Zilla said.

▪  PennDOT is doing a drainage repair and repaving project on Atherton Street through Patton, Ferguson and College townships and State College borough, which is divided into four sections, Zilla said.

The first section through Patton Township is complete, he said. The second section, from Aaron Drive in Ferguson Township to Park Avenue in the borough, is scheduled to be bid late this year.

There will be some widening in that section, he said, and utility work is already underway.

The expected construction cost is $13.8 million, Zilla said.

▪  Two bridges along Route 144 are slated to be under construction starting next summer, one in Boggs Township and the other in Snow Shoe Township, Zilla said.

That’s the main road from Bald Eagle Valley to Snow Shoe so traffic will be maintained, he said, either through a detour or half-width construction.

Bike path projects

▪  Work is getting started on the Puddintown to Orchard Road Bike Connector, which will make an off-road connection from the Puddintown trail to Orchard Road, said Trish Meek, senior transportation planner for CRPA.

The project will also extend bike lines along Orchard Road to meet the existing bike lanes, Meek said.

The project is a partnership with College Township and Penn State, she said, and it is likely to be completed in the 2018 construction season.

▪  The design phase for the Valley Vista shared-use path, a joint project with Ferguson and Patton townships, is getting underway, Meek said.

It’s slated to be constructed parallel to Valley Vista Drive from Carnegie Drive down to the existing Tudek/Circleville Bikeway, Meek said.

She said it likely won’t begin construction until 2019.

This story was originally published August 1, 2017 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Centre County bustling with transportation projects."