WHITEHALL TWP., Pa.- Thursday morning, state Sen. Nick Miller (D-14th District) announced $6 million dollars in secured funds for the Route 22 widening project, which the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation says pushes the work much earlier than expected.<\/p>\n
“Today’s a historical moment, because it starts that process of getting, finalizing, the process, and really allowing for us to get the construction as soon as possible,” Miller said, on helping to secure funding for the project which aims to widen 22 between Fullerton Avenue and Airport Road.<\/p>\n
The money, part of a $34 million plan, will be used for moving utilities, purchasing land, and updating the design.<\/p>\n
PennDOT says it paves the way for the three-lane widening project to start at the end of 2029.<\/p>\n
The proposed work is on a stretch of Route 22 that sees 110,000 cars daily and growing and is a high-accident area.<\/p>\n
The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission says in the past five years, there have been 12 serious crashes and fatalities, and that widening makes the road safer and alleviates congestion.<\/p>\n
“Think about 22 and everybody’s like, ‘That’s not gonna happen in my lifetime.’ It’s our goal to change that mindset, like it is gonna happen in this decade that we’re going to get to construction,” Miller added.<\/p>\n
Officials say another $28 million dollars needs to be secured before construction can start.<\/p>\n
PennDOT says securing the funds is a priority, and the project will coincide with a separate project of updating and widening the Fullerton Avenue interchange.<\/p>\n
The widening project is expected to take two to three years once construction starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHITEHALL TWP., Pa.- Thursday morning, state Sen. Nick Miller (D-14th District) announced $6 million dollars in secured funds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[7790,119,121,120,47083,2022,18090,28,7874,37792,26770],"class_list":["post-97363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-airport-road","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-fullerton-avenue-interchange","tag-lehigh-valley-planning-commission","tag-nick-miller","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-department-of-transportation","tag-transportation-in-pennsylvania","tag-whitehall-twp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}