US Route 22 Planning and Needs Study

Orth-Rodgers & Associates, Inc. (ORA) was retained by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission to conduct the US Route 22 Planning and Needs Study. The purpose of the study, called 22FUTURE was to prepare a vision of what US Route 22, the Lehigh Valley Thruway, should look like and how it should function twenty years into the future. The study began to address a very public dialog regarding the future of that major facility.

Some members of the public desired another expressway parallel to US Route 22 (but to the north) to address the congestion issues on the existing highway and some wanted to simply widen the existing facility. Complicating the study was the need to implement the master plan of the Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority (LANTA) and Lehigh County’s Land Use Plan.

Working with the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, its travel projection model, and PennDOT staff, a Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) was established and a study process was agreed upon. The study process was designed to identify project needs first and then to analyze alternative solutions to address the identified needs. The process was very public in that the project needs were developed in conjunction with the CAC and once established, a series of 42 alternatives was considered ranging from widening existing US Route 22 to six or to eight lanes over various sections, widening I-78 to six lanes, constructing or improving parallel roadways or improving feeder roadways to US Route 22. Also considered were additional interchanges to I-78, a parallel freeway north of existing US Route 22, additional public transportation service and implementation of the Commission’s Land Use Plan. The base improvement is improvement of the interchanges along the existing roadway.

The alternative identified as best meeting the needs of congestion reduction, safety improvement and deficient roadway and ramp geometry was to widen the existing facility to six and eight lanes, improve the feeder routes and supplement public transit service to the employment centers along US Route 22.

Once the alternative best meeting the needs was identified, an analysis dividing the 20 mile project into design sections was undertaken. Section boundaries were identified such that each section had independent utility and could be constructed without undue disruption of traffic, but most important, could be constructed in order of their urgency as identified in the needs analysis.