POTTSTOWN >> Ask most drivers and they probably think about traffic the same way Mark Twain is said to have described the weather — “everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
But the members of the Pottstown Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Committee would like to do something about it.
They would like to have it studied with an eye toward making it better.
Eleven months after securing funding from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the local planning group got its first overview of what the study will look at, and what it could accomplish during its Dec. 6 meeting.
DVRPC Planner Karen Whitaker told the planners the first step is to get local in formation from them.
The study are will include 10 different critical locations amid the eight municipalities in the region. High crash areas, evacuation routes and committee recommendations will all be part of the data gathering.
Montgomery County Planner John Cover told the committee “you had better come to the next meeting prepared to work.”
That meeting is scheduled for Jan. 24.
He even suggested that some of the officials bring members of their own public works departments or planning commissions to help identify the worst intersections.
Whittaker said the study will be a two-year job.
It will include short-term and long-term mitigation strategies.
The idea is to choose 10 intersections and to get everyone to pick them together, particularly improvements that benefit more than one municipality, said Cover.
The best outcomes of the study will be improvements that have a big impact for a small amount of money, “because we can get them done more quickly,” he said.
Discussion of the broad regional study began with concerns raised in Douglass (Mont.) Township about the impact of a project with more than 700 homes being proposed in New Hanover.
Douglass officials worried about the increase in traffic along Philadelphia Avenue with the new residents trying to get to Route 100.
Concerns were subsequently raised about the impact of traffic from the 500-unit proposal in Lower Pottsgrove called Sanatoga Green.
Wednesday night, Crystal Gilchrist, another Montgomery County planner, said one way to reduce traffic on major roads is to connect minor ones.
When new adjacent developments don’t connect with each other — each with its own set of cul de sacs — traffic has no choice but to head to the main roads, she said.
