TodayTurnpike relents, Center Road stays open
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Article RatingThe Turnpike Commission decided Tuesday to keep the Center Road underpass in Lower Mifflin Township open while construction continues on Route 233 and Middle Road.
The decision came after two weeks of pressure from local officials who said closing all three at once would wreak havoc on the area.
“Hey, the little guy wins,” said Rich Fry, superintendent of Big Spring School District and leading critic of the plan.
The decision came after the commission’s board of directors met early Monday afternoon.
Center Road will now stay open until construction on the Route 233 bridge over Interstate 76 ends in mid-August.
The turnpike had scheduled to simultaneously close Route 233, also known as Doubling Gap Road, Center Road and Middle Road until the end of October.
Local officials complained closing the three roads, which are within a mile of one another, would cut off much of Lower Mifflin from schools, major highways and, most importantly, emergency service responders.
“From a community standpoint, this is what we have been asking for the last two and a half weeks,” Fry said.
Emergency responders voiced the sharpest critiques of the original plan. They said it could add as many as 25 minutes to response times in some parts of the township, lengthening some runs to as long as 50 minutes.
Even one extra minute can be the difference between life and death, said Troy Wiser, president of the Friendship Hose Co. of Newville.
“Keeping Center Road open was my first goal from the start” he said.
The closures are part of a $62 million commission project to widen the turnpike to six lanes between the Blue Mountain Tunnel and the Carlisle interchange.
Bill Capone, Turnpike Commission spokesman, said the board of directors heard Tuesday the full extent of the project for the first time. In particular, he said, its decision was based the concerns of emergency responders.
“One they realized the impact of the closures ... it was pretty apparent to our commissioners they really had to agree to keep Center Road open,” Capone said.
The delay and accelerated construction schedule for Route 233 — officials earlier decided to speed up its construction by about two months — will cost the commission an additional $1.1 million, he said.
The impact on the construction schedule will not be significant, Capone added.
Fry credited the commission’s reversal to a “team effort” from Lower Mifflin, EMS and county officials and state Sen. Pat Vance, R-31, and Rep. Will Gabig, R-199.
Vance was still critical of the commission’s failure to communicate the plan after its decision. She and other local officials found out about the closures only weeks before they were to begin.
“I applaud the commission for seeing the value in keeping this road open,” Vance said in a statement. “I’m hopeful potential problems in the future will be avoided with better communication. Since this is the first of a multi-phase project to widen the turnpike in Cumberland County, more forethought will be very useful when making decisions in the future.”
Fry said bus routes could still take 10 minutes longer for some students, but added, “We can live with that.”
