Maple Street repairs in Annville Township may be too smooth for pedestrian safety

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Annville Township commissioners heard a proposal Tuesday to add traffic controls on Maple Street after 2024 repaving work eliminated road imperfections that once naturally slowed drivers.

Douglas Nyce, vice president of the Friends of Old Annville, told commissioners Tuesday that the township should make the intersection at Ziegler and Maple streets a four-way stop because 2024 pavement repairs allow people to drive too fast on Maple Street for pedestrian safety.

Nyce also suggested pedestrian crosswalk warning lights for three other intersections in Annville Township.

Maple Street was repaved “so good that you filled in those divots, where cars used to have to slow down, and then proceed,” Nyce said. “And so what’s happening is cars are racing down Maple Street because they know they can without bottoming out.”

The intersection currently is a two-way stop, with signs on Ziegler Street.

Nyce told commissioners he had considered recommending judder bars to slow traffic on Maple Street but acknowledged no one likes speed bumps. A four-way stop at Ziegler and Maple would instead require drivers who start on Maple from Ulrich Street to stop at Ziegler and slow their acceleration.

“It’s sort of a midway point there,” Nyce said. “A four-way stop instead of a two-way stop at Ziegler and Maple might eliminate that issue without having to inconvenience people with speed bumps.”

Nyce also advocated for flashing lights at three crosswalks on the east end of Main Street.

“I interact with a lot of businesspeople in town, and the people up at the east end have complained to me, multiple times, how nothing’s ever done for the east end,” he said. As Main Street broadens near the United Church of Christ retirement home, “people feel like they can go around cars that stop for crosswalks,” Nyce added.

Nyce recommended flashing lights for these crosswalk intersections:

• Ulrich and Main streets, a heavily trafficked crosswalk used to reach Quittie Creek Nature Park.
• Saylor and Main streets, with pedestrian access to a funeral home and to St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church.
• First Avenue and Main Street, which gets a lot of use, especially by youth during the summer, to reach the Annville-Cleona Community Pool.

Nyce conceded flashing crosswalk lights are expensive. Board president Rex Moore noted that a previous police chief procured a grant to help pay for crosswalk lights installed elsewhere in the township that cost $150,000.

The board of commissioners also approved a letter of recommendation in support of the Friends of Old Annville’s application for Lebanon County Hotel Tax grant funds for Historic Old Annville Day. The celebration will be Saturday, June 13, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the Lebanon Valley College campus and adjacent residential streets, North College and East Sheridan avenues.

In other business:

• Western Lebanon County Regional Police Chief Andrew Winters told the board that 38% of calls for service, or 3,518 calls of 9,322 for the region in 2025, were from Annville, with 58% of the calls coming from Palmyra and 4% from South Annville. The regional department had 16 officers allocated last year, Winters said. For the entire region, police made 170 criminal arrests, 2,613 traffic stops, 32 driving while intoxicated arrests and addressed 326 vehicle accidents, he said.
• The board unanimously approved Celebrate! Annville’s request for fire and police help with traffic at U.S. Route 422 and Bachman Road, for its Bunny Hop Egg Hunt, Saturday, March 28, from noon to 2 p.m. at Quittie Creek Nature Park.
• Annville Township will install two new benches for its participation in the National Take a Walk in the Park Day, at 2 p.m. Monday, March 30, also in Quittie Creek Nature Park. One of the benches will be dedicated in the name of Quittapahilla Watershed Association board member Ann Marie Lasky.
• The Annville Free Library’s annual meeting will be Monday, April 20, said director Ronice Nolt. The library hopes to unveil some placards commemorating people who donated to the library’s recent expansion. Nolt said 70% of township residents have library cards. Program participation, circulation numbers and the number of patrons’ visits were all up in 2025, she said.
• Parade organizer Angelina Markel requested $250 from the township for a banner in an Independence Day parade celebrating America’s 250^th anniversary. The parade is scheduled to begin in Jonestown at 6 p.m. Friday, July 3.
• The board approved a recommendation of the wage and salary committee to move two employees from salaries to hourly wages.