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Lancaster County plans 100 road improvement projects

LANCASTER, Pa. — One thing many people may like to complain about besides the weather are Pennsylvania roads and traffic. The Lancaster County Planning Co...

LANCASTER, Pa. -- One thing many people may like to complain about besides the weather are Pennsylvania roads and traffic.

The Lancaster County Planning Commission has an updated to do list of about 100 improvement projects for the county.

Drivers have a lot to say about the bridges and roads of Lancaster County.

Motorist Brent Bieske said "the roads in Lancaster County are very old and very out of maintenance, and need to be fixed."

Motorist Frieda Roberson said "bridges need to be safe. We have a lot of water, and a lot of floods, and sometimes the water comes over the bridges, so yeah, we need the bridges to be repaired."

Every two years, the Lancaster County Planning Commission makes a plan to address those concerns. The latest Transportation Improvement Program targets 100 projects at a cost of $225 million.

Lancaster County Director for Transportation Planning Robert Bini said "it still doesn't cover all the needs that we actually have, so there's always the problem of trying to direct the money to what the community believes are the most needy projects."

Along with smoothing over drivers' concerns about bumpy roads, more than half of the projects on the list include repairing and replacing county bridges.

"We're doing the public's business here, this all involves money that's being expended on behalf of the residents of Lancaster County," Bini said.

The list of road projects doesn't stop with construction.

"Not so much widening roads, and that kind of thing, but re-timing the signals, using more sophisticated technology, to manage those kinds of things in order to improve traffic flow," Bini said.

"It's always a pain in the butt when construction is going on, or if you're having to take detours, but it's much better in the long run when it's done, and you're not on a bridge that's about to collapse," Bieske said.

While some drivers may be happy to see repairs, others might not be happy about the summer construction season.

"It's just inconvenience of the time frame, summertime is the time for fun, but we've got to do the work," Roberson said.

About another $80 million set aside for the program wouldn't focus only on drivers, but anyone who needs to move from point a to point b.

"Transit users, users of the pedestrian and trail networks, or bicyclist that might be using the transportation system that everyone hopefully will benefit," Bini said.

Once the Lancaster County Planning Commission gets the final sign-off from the county, PennDOT, and the federal government to spend those dollars, construction could begin as soon as October 1st, which is the start of the U.S. Government's fiscal year."

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