When you’re a transportation planner, it’s easy to wow — or maybe frustrate — people with the giant price tags on some of the Lehigh Valley’s biggest road and bridge projects.
Numbers like more than $100 million to fix the crash-prone Route 309 and Tilghman Street interchange, $98 million to rehabilitate Bethlehem’s uniquely historic Hill-to-Hill Bridge, or $79 million to separate the roads at the increasingly busy Route 309 and Center Valley Parkway interchange are enough to make your wallet shudder.
The Lehigh Valley’s draft four-year, $545 million Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) is currently in 30-day public review. It’s got 104 road, bridge, trail, transit and safety projects in every corner of the region, yet nearly 40% of that money is going to just six projects. Those few megaprojects are hogging up most of the cash, but that’s what it costs to reduce crashes and congestion at some of the Lehigh Valley’s most troublesome transportation corridors. Yet, talk to people near some of the smaller projects and they’ll tell you that you don’t always have to spend eight digits to make a major impact.
Rather than go for those attention-grabbers, let’s talk about some under-the-radar projects that are bringing relief to neighborhoods and motorists across the region.
First, a brief explanation on the TIP: It’s a four-year plan to maintain and enhance the Lehigh Valley’s transportation network, but it’s updated every two years, as projects, priorities and costs evolve, with roughly 80% of the money coming from federal sources and the rest coming from state and local pools of money. It’s integral to the Lehigh Valley’s economic and social future.
If you’d like to peruse the TIP yourself, and make a comment, it can be found at lvpc.org/transportation-programs.
These Lehigh Valley road projects are planned for 2026, plus what’s ongoing from 2025
Here’s just a few of my favorite hidden gems in the plan:
Route 248 Realignment, Bath Borough: This section of West Northampton Street included a small weight-restricted bridge that was forcing tractor-trailers through a National Register of Historic Places listed district with neighborhood streets that simply weren’t built to handle vehicles that large. Yes, $8.1 million is still a lot of money to replace the bridge and straighten the road, but it is alleviating challenges residents and businesses were dealing with daily in a borough that has five state roads running through its business and residential core. This new TIP has only $200,000 to put the finishing touches on this, but that shows how many projects span multiple TIPs because they take more than four years to plan, design and construct.
Route 611 Retaining Wall, Easton: Clearly PennDOT worked hard to come up with a title this boring, but this $3.7 million project — I know, still a lot of money — is designed to keep the hillside from spilling out over a winding section of Route 611 in Easton, as well as keep the road from tumbling into the Delaware River. That’s what happened on Route 611 in the Delaware Water Gap in 2022 when a rockslide closed the road, forcing drivers into a 10-mile detour for nearly two years. Even now it operates as a single-lane road, restricted to vehicles less than eight feet wide, while major retaining wall repairs are made. These TIP repairs will make sure that doesn’t happen in Easton.
Freeway Service Patrols: This project involves no design, engineering or concrete, but talk with anyone who’s broken down on the highway and they’ll tell you what a godsend these are. This is $1.5 million to pay for two years of roving tow trucks that essentially patrol a loop along Route 22, Interstate 78 and Route 33 from 78/22 split in Upper to the Route 33 connection in Bethlehem Township.
If someone breaks down or runs out of gas — this happens more than you’d think — along those corridors, these patrols race to them and get them off the highway within minutes. It gets them out of the congestion and to safety and prevents hundreds, and potentially thousands, of motorists from getting stuck in the gridlock that would ensue if they weren’t there. Huge impact daily.
Broad Street Multimodal, Bethlehem: This is an exciting project that will add things like medians, crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands and traffic-calming bumpouts that will make the Broad Street corridor from Hanover Avenue to Stefko Boulevard more welcoming to pedestrians and bicyclists and safer for everyone. $1.4 million in the TIP will be added to $10 million in grant money won by Bethlehem for the project. It’s going to turn a busy, dangerously difficult-to-cross roadway into a model of how to build a transportation network designed for more than just cars and trucks.
Enhanced Bus/Bus Rapid Transit: This TIP has $1.7 million to help advance the Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority’s express bus service. Bus Rapid Transit comes more frequently and gets riders through the region more quickly, making transit more convenient for more people. It ultimately will get more cars off the road, reducing congestion and improving air quality, while serving as a precursor to a light rail system.
I could easily add dozens more because the TIP is a carefully curated, highly analyzed list of projects chosen for their ability to make our network safer, more efficient and impactful in our communities. It has to be because this is a growing region and we simply don’t have enough money to do everything necessary, so setting priorities is extremely important.
That’s why it’s worth looking beyond the headline-grabbing megaprojects and appreciating the quieter investments that keep the Lehigh Valley moving every day. Not every transportation success story comes with a ribbon-cutting, towering cranes or eight-figure budget. Sometimes it’s a safer crossing for a student, a truck rerouted from a neighborhood street, a disabled vehicle cleared before traffic backs up for miles, or a hillside stabilized before disaster strikes.
That’s the challenge of transportation planning in a fast-growing region like ours. Every dollar must work hard. Every project must matter. And while the big projects may capture the attention, it’s often the smaller ones that earn the gratitude of the people who use them every single day.
This is a contributed opinion column. Becky Bradley is executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission. She can be reached at planning@lvpc.org.