Route 22 has a bad reputation but is vital to area's businesses
When I say "Route 22", I know what comes to mind for most people in the Lehigh Valley. Rush hour traffic. An accident up ahead exactly when you are late for an appointment. A white-knuckle ride behind a tractor-trailer hanging out in the passing lane while an aggressive driver rides your bumper. Entrance and exit ramps that test the acceleration of your vehicle. And oblivious and aggressive drivers whose level of entitlement rivals any 3-year-old's.
But I have a little different view of Route 22. More than any other road in this region, it is the way people get to work, to school, to shopping centers, to recreation and just about any other activity that occupies our daily lives. It is our economic lifeblood. It is the Lehigh Valley's Main Street.
It also just turned 70 years old. In honor of Route 22's birthday, let's take a drive down memory lane. Pennsylvania Gov. John S. Fine cut the ribbon to open Route 22 at the Airport Road interchange on Sept. 21, 1954, for the first time giving drivers a path through the Lehigh Valley without hitting a single traffic light or stop sign. Before that day, they were left with Old Route 22, which entered the Lehigh Valley from New Jersey along Northampton Street, continuing through downtown Easton and Wilson, before veering into William Penn Highway through Palmer and Bethlehem townships, through Bethlehem along Union Boulevard and through downtown Allentown along Tilghman Street. Along the way, drivers went through 31 traffic lights and a series of twisting, winding turns that made a trek through the region take the better part of an afternoon.
The largest section of Route 22 was planned and constructed in five years at a cost of $21 million. I won't even guess what that would be today, except to say it would be measured in decades and hundreds of millions – maybe billions – of dollars. It may be 70, but I'm pretty sure we're not getting the senior discount on this one.
By 1957, 21,000 vehicles were using the road at its busiest point near Airport Road. Today, a highway that is largely the same four lanes it was when it was first built, is handling 110,000 vehicles a day, including more than 11,000 tractor-trailers.
Back then, Route 22 was four lanes of concrete winding largely through open pastures and farm fields. Today, it is bracketed by office buildings, more than a dozen hotels, six industrial parks, several shopping complexes and thousands of homes.
The Valley's population has bulged to 700,000, and more than 2 billion vehicles have traversed Route 22's well-worn pavement. My point is, our Valley has grown and evolved a lot since 1954 and it's time that Route 22 evolves with it. Thanks to a $1 million grant secured by state Sen. Nick Miller, D-Lehigh, and Secretary of Transportation Michael Carroll — Pennsylvania leaders understand how much this highway means to the statewide economy — we're able to determine what that means.
It's not as though Route 22 has been neglected. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested to maintain it, and the current 25-year, Long-Range Transportation Plan includes $1.7 billion to enhance and improve Route 22. The problem is, more than $1 billion of the work projected to be needed is not funded. With all the other demands of a Lehigh Valley transportation network tasked with handling a growing population, there simply isn't enough money to support a highway with so much need.
So, with help from that state commitment, we'll soon embark on a project to develop a strategic plan of what it will take to maintain the highway, how it should change, what it's future should look like and perhaps most importantly, what options are there to fund its evolution. We're working on a lot of important projects right now, including housing attainability and climate action, but there may not be anything more important we do next year than determine how Route 22 should serve this region into the distant future. And this won't just be about how to make it efficient at getting traffic from one end of the region to the other. It must be sustainable, environmentally friendly and we have to pay attention to how it's going to look. We can do better than scrubby tumble weeds in the medians.
Unlike most Lehigh Valley drivers, I'm a planning nerd who is rather fond of this Lehigh Valley institution. It deserves our full attention. Isn't that the first rule of community development? Take care of Main Street.
Becky Bradley is executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.
