West Shore Bypass Route 422 rebuild plans near finish after years of design work [Video]

How in the world do you reconstruct and widen about 5 miles of the West Shore Bypass — including reconfiguring the problematic Lancaster Avenue and Penn Street/Penn Avenue interchanges — without long-term road closures?

The answer, according to PennDOT officials and their design consultants, is phases of construction carried out methodically over at least a half-dozen years.

“If you do the math, what we’re anticipating right now is six years of construction of PH1 (phase 1 of the project),” PennDOT consultant project manager Earl Armitage, said during the presentation to the Reading Area Transportation Study coordinating committee at its Sept. 19 meeting. “A big piece of that is to maintain traffic through this whole corridor while we’re trying to build all this heavy infrastructure and all these structures in and around traffic in a very tight workspace.”

The first phase involves a congested section of the Route 422 expressway mired by left exits and competing movements, between the Buttonwood Street Bridge underpass in West Reading and the Interstate 176 interchange in Cumru Township.

The construction could be completed in half that time if traffic were diverted from the Lancaster Avenue interchange during the work, officials said, but that’s not feasible due to the traffic volume the interchange handles as one of Reading’s gateways.

The estimated $360 million project — the largest highway or bridge project being undertaken by PennDOT in Berks County — is in the latter stage of final design, said Chris Kufro, PennDOT District 5 executive. He said an enormous amount of permit and right-of-way-acquisition work remains before a construction contract is expected to be awarded around September 2027, a little less than three years from now.

“This is an extremely important project for the region,” Kufro told transportation planners in September. “It’s been in design for a number of years.”

Berks County Transportation Planner Alan Piper said PennDOT has committed a large amount of its statewide discretionary funding for the project. Those are state funds available to use for major regional projects that would be difficult if not impossible for regional transportation planning groups to cover through their allotment of federal funds for highway and bridge projects.

Challenging project

Tim Benner, senior vice president of CDR Maguire Engineering, leads the design team.

One of the difficulties with the project, he explained, is that widening of the highway can go only in one direction — away from the Schuylkill River. The project cannot impact the flow of the river, he added.

That means the part of the new Route 422 alignment will pass through the existing Lancaster Avenue diamond interchange.

“When we’re all said and done with the overall project, we’ll have a six-lane section between Route 12 and I-176,” Benner said.

Two auxiliary lanes between the Penn and Lancaster Avenue interchanges will bring it to a total of eight lanes in that section, a huge upgrade from the current configuration of two travel lanes in each direction with short, single-lane ramps.

The Bingaman Street Bridge will be rebuilt to raise the height of its western footing for ramp clearance for the new Lancaster Avenue interchange. Instead of turning left onto a ramp to head east after crossing the river, southbound vehicles will go under Route 422, then loop back and enter the expressway from a conventional right-side ramp.

The Penn Street Bridge, which was reconstructed just five years ago in a $42.6 million PennDOT project, will have to be partially rebuilt.

The design scheme is the same as the draft version unveiled in 2016.

As part of that work, PennDOT needs to overhaul 18 bridges and build retaining walls.

The interchanges at either end of the widening would be tweaked to accommodate the extra lanes and improve traffic flow, but the Penn Avenue cloverleaf and notorious left-on-left-off Lancaster Avenue exchanges would get major makeovers.

The West Reading cloverleaf would be replaced by a divergent diamond interchange. By way of flyover ramps, traffic traveling in opposite directions swaps lanes at crossovers controlled by traffic signals.

“What it does is it just makes it a lot more operationally efficient for traffic through there,” Benner said, adding there will be one traffic signal regulating the flow on both ends of the rebuilt span that carries Penn Avenue over the expressway.

Also, rather than keeping different exits for traffic headed to West Reading and Reading, the new design would have all traffic exit into a two-lane ramp that would split, eliminating games of chicken between drivers exiting and getting on the bypass.

Pedestrians, bicyclists

Benner said that bridge is an important link for pedestrian traffic in and out of Reading.

“One of the big things as we’re developing this project that we heard from the community is we need to address pedestrian and bicycle accommodation,” he said. “We do have 6-foot shoulders all the way through the interchange that will match up with wider shoulders that are on the reconstructed Penn bridge over the Schuylkill River that will accommodate bicycles through the interchange. “

Signalized ramps will provide a safer way for pedestrians to cross them.

“Those that are familiar with that cloverleaf interchange know that there’s no real control on any of the crossings out there, so it’s difficult for pedestrians to get across the ramps that are moving through the interchange area,” Benner said. “Most of the crossings in the new divergent diamond interchange will be protected crossings with the new signals.”

Lancaster Avenue area

At Lancaster Avenue, the on-ramp for Route 422 west and exit from Route 422 east will still be where Lancaster Avenue meets the Bingaman Street Bridge. But the on-ramp to Route 422 East and exit from Route 422 West will be moved a block away to the intersection of Route 10 and Fern Avenue.

That change will result in the two traffic lights on Lancaster Avenue near the interchange being reduced to one.

Lancaster Avenue and Route 10 would need to be widened to improve traffic and make the area easier to navigate. And now-banned left turns from Route 10 onto Lancaster Avenue would be allowed.

The Schuylkill River Trail would need to be shifted, and new trail bridges would be required to accommodate the new highway ramps.

Access from Route 10 to Fern Avenue would be closed to eliminate the temptation to cut through a residential neighborhood to get between Lancaster Avenue and the bypass instead of using Route 10.

Second phase

Phase 2 involves widening the section between the Buttonwood Street Bridge underpass and Route 12 on the western end of the reconstruction and replacing a bridge that carries Route 422 over the Schuylkill River on the eastern end.

The piece at the western end is a problematic stretch from an engineering standpoint, officials said, because of two railroad bridges that traverse the highway.

Phase 2, which is estimated to cost $182 million, will soon move into final design. The forecast contract-letting date is in 2034.

It will require about four years of construction, which means Berks motorists are looking at a decade of West Shore Bypass construction activity beginning late this decade.

Public forum set

PennDOT will be providing a project update and present details on initial phase of the Route 422/West Shore Bypass improvement project in an online presentation Nov. 7 at noon. The public is invited to attend via Zoom.

Register in advance at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcqd-2rrjIoG91gnMt1hikjJ3ryCLk3zdXm

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

The project website, www.422westshorebypass.com, includes detailed descriptions of each section with numerous visuals.

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