The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa., The Road Warrior Column: Route 22 Dip is Becoming a Great Depression

By Dan Hartzell, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Jan. 7–Q: On the westbound lanes of Route 22, just w est of the Route 378 bridges, a significant depression is forming across both lanes. It definitely gets your attention as you drive over it. Any word from PennDOT on a repair?

Ken Irvine Jr., Bethlehem

The dip on the westbound side of Route 22 just after Schoenersville Road seems to be getting worse. Is PennDOT aware?

Ken Pletz, Lower Nazareth Township

The depression I am referring to has nothing to do with my state of mind! On 22 westbound, just before the exit to 378, there is a depression across the two lanes of highway. It started off as a minor dip, but seems to have grown, and is getting pretty ugly to drive over. Could you look into the problem and whether a solution has been proposed?

Murray Levine, Bethlehem Township

A: It is a rather depressing subject, isn’t it, Murray?

When the Warrior first checked on this situation nearly a year ago, he decided the dip wasn’t significant enough to worry about.

In an e-mail exchange, he recommended that Ken Irvine, a self-professed car nut, slow down a bit when he passes this section of roadway, because generally, the faster you’re going, the more bone-rattling a bump or dip is going to feel.The depression is more noticeable now than when the Warrior first felt it 11 months ago, even at the alleged speed limit of 55 mph. While it still won’t throw your car into a tailspin, it appears to be getting worse.

By the time the Warrior called PennDOT last week to inquire about it, officials already were aware of the problem and had geared up an investigation.

There’s a drainage pipe running beneath the roadway right about where the sag is located, and officials suspect it might be the culprit.

“We did get some complaints” about the dip from motorists, said PennDOT District 5 spokesman Ron Young, adding that a district maintenance official noticed it in his own car as well.

“We’re speculating the pipe might be failing,” Young said.

If engineers can’t determine the condition of the pipe by visual inspection, they could use a remote camera designed to feed into its interior for a better look, he said.

If part of the pipe has collapsed, the support for the roadway could be undermined, causing the sag. Fairly large cracks span both travel lanes of the road, offset from each other by about 18 inches, just before to the slightly sunken portion of the roadway, and they may have resulted from such a loss of support, said Al Picca, District 5′s assistant engineer for construction.

Generally, storm-water runoff pipes are made of concrete, and this one appears to be about 3 feet in diameter, judging by the size of the concrete outlet emerging from the north side of the highway.

If the pipe has collapsed, it would have to be dug up and replaced, along with the affected concrete road surface, Picca said. In most cases, that kind of work can be done in a number of days, rather than weeks, and during off-peak hours, he said.

Young and Picca said the district receives many complaints from motorists, all of which are investigated. Those deemed genuine problems are evaluated and addressed based on need. A downed stop sign, for example, has to be replaced as soon as possible, Picca said. A dip like the one we’re discussing poses a less-pressing dilemma, and will be addressed as time permits.

Sounds like a decent plan, so long as too many problems don’t slip through the inevitable cracks in the floorboards. It appears that won’t happen regarding the depression on Route 22, gentlemen.

And the Warrior regrets his original response to you, Ken. You were right, it’s a significant sag.

Road Service: In the course of discussing the depression, the Warrior asked about last summer’s repairs to some of the naturally occurring speed bumps that had arisen on portions of Route 22, particularly between 15th Street and Fullerton Avenue. Because of complaints from motorists, including U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, the raised asphalt ridges were milled off last year — a temporary repair, officials noted. (They were right: Some of the bumps have returned, new ones have arisen, and potholes have appeared, including at the infamous MacArthur Road interchange.)

At that time, officials said said the affected stretch of Route 22 was scheduled for repaving in 2009. But that’s been advanced, thanks to new money from Act 44 of 2007, and if we don’t have any breakdowns, the work could begin as early as late June of this year, and cover 22 from the I-78 split to the Lehigh River Bridge, as well as a two-mile stretch from Route 191 to Farmersville Road in Northampton County.

Before you push the panic button, folks, the plan is for the work to be done at night, with four lanes of travel maintained during the high-volume daytime hours. On the downhill side, the work probably can’t be completed by the end of this year’s construction season, so it would halt for the winter and resume in 2009 anyway. We’ll have updates as we get further down the road.

The start of “Route 22 Tomorrow,” the widening and full-scale reconstruction plan, is four years down the road by PennDOT’s calculator, and 20 years by the Warrior’s.

Road Warrior appears Mondays and Fridays. E-mail questions about roadways, traffic and transportation to . Please include your name and the municipality where you live. Or, write to Road Warrior, The Morning Call, 101 N. Sixth St., Allentown, PA 18101-1480.

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