{"id":98254,"date":"2026-01-27T21:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T21:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/98254\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T21:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T21:51:10","slug":"officials-submit-petition-urging-route-85-improvements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/98254\/","title":{"rendered":"Officials submit petition urging Route 85 improvements"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bethlehem and Albany representatives and area residents are urging the state Department of Transportation to make safety improvements to State Route 85, calling the roadway a &#8220;corridor of crisis and heartbreak.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bethlehem Town Board member David DeCancio and Albany Common Councilman Jack Flynn submitted a petition to the DOT signed by more 1,000 people.<\/p>\n<p>The petition makes three corrective action demands: a comprehensive safety audit of the highway with findings publicly released within 30 days; immediate funding for interim safety measures to mitigate risk; and a fully funded, permanent safety plan to re-engineer the corridor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They say <a href=\"https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/route-85-is-corridor-of-crisis-heartbreak-let-s-demand-state-dot-action-now?recruiter=1325409722&amp;recruited_by_id=36cc3d90-aaa3-11ee-adf2-692d6e1879c1&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_campaign=petition_dashboard&amp;utm_medium=copylink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the petition<\/a> responds to a long history of fatalities and crashes on the highway, particularly due to what they call a &#8220;lane reduction funnel&#8221; on both ends of the Bethlehem section of the road.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRoute\u00a085\u00a0is no longer just a concern, it\u2019s a danger to every driver in the Capital Region,\u201d DeCancio said in a joint statement. \u201cThe community\u2019s message is loud and clear: We will not wait for another tragedy. We demand safety now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This petition shows that our government officials need to act as the accidents are preventable,&#8221; Flynn said. &#8220;If any change to\u00a0Route\u00a085\u00a0prevents a death, then we did our job.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bethlehem and Albany representatives and area residents are urging the state Department of Transportation to make safety improvements&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1593,290,153,155,154,139,294,1592,2155],"class_list":["post-98254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-app-public-safety","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98254","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=98254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}