Only in America’s fifth-largest city, a town whose people have a superhuman pain-tolerance level, can a fabulous, sensible, taxpayer-financed plan that would make transportation abundantly better go nowhere fast for a half century.
Last week’s community meeting at Lower Moreland High School was just another in a series of occasional bull sessions on the elusive plan to extend the Woodhaven Road expressway westward.
Through the years, elected officials on the city, state and federal levels — the people with the power and ability to cut the red tape and shepherd this very worthy project from a gleam in the eyes of traffic engineers to reality — have sat on their hands on the Woodhaven issue.
None of the three options that PennDOT has put forth to relieve the traffic monstrosity in Somerton will ever have unanimous support, but politicians are petrified of alienating any one voting bloc — and therefore they are not making the Woodhaven project happen.
Residents of Lower Moreland and Somerton’s Westwood section are opposed to a highway running through their neighborhood, and that is understandable. They are good and decent folks who pay their property taxes. However, they are not prima donnas who should be allowed to stymie a necessary project for decades. The right of way for the Woodhaven extension was there before their homes were even built.
By all means, PennDOT, build the highway! And along the way, install sound barriers to shield neighbors from the noise. Sound barriers work just fine for residents who live near the Blue Route in the burbs and I-95 in Philly, and they will work just as well in Westwood.
PennDOT should accept Somerton resident Joe Needham’s challenge: “Make a decision. We’ll fight you if we don’t like it.”
Go ahead. Make Joe’s day.