Road maintenance, surfacing among PennDOT’s active projects in county

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Road maintenance and resurfacing are among PennDOT District 8’s active projects in Lebanon County as shown on a map provided Tuesday to members of the Lebanon County Metropolitan Planning Organization technical committee.

The map shows what PennDOT has actively in construction and what will be bid. Maintenance activities are shown in green, road resurfacing in blue and bridge projects in red boxes. The maintenance projects are mostly in the western part of the county and involve seal coating.

Three projects are active: resurfacing of state Route 72 from the Lancaster County line to Rocherty Road; bridge replacement on state Route 501 in Myerstown; and a regional interstate project involving PennDOT’s traffic alerts and traffic management programs. (The new Route 501 bridge opened last fall but the project is still going through the closeout process.)

The only work to date in Lebanon County on the regional project involved installation of a CCTV camera on westbound Interstate 78, said Carey Mullins, PennDOT District 8 transportation planning and program manager, in an email Wednesday.

Eventually, the project will add several more CCTV cameras at key locations to give better on-site view of various locations of I-81/I-78 for the PennDOT Traffic Ops Center.

Paving and milling of Route 72 is slated to being in July, Mullins told the committee. Potholes will be patched, he added.

In other business, Michael Curry of Lebanon Transit reported the bids for the new facility came in at $41 million, lower than the estimated $47 million. The low bidders should be awarded contracts sometime next week, he added.

He also noted that Lebanon Transit is finalizing a new route from Myerstown to Womelsdorf that will run four times a day.

Jon Fitzkee, senior transportation planner with Lebanon County planning, noted that the 30-day public comment period on the MPO’s draft Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) closed, and his office received one comment. The TIP identifies bridge, highway and transit projects that are in the planning pipeline for the next several years.

In his update on the MPO’s special planning study on the Route 72 and Cornwall Road corridor, Fitzkee said an open house at the DES building on Cornwall Road will be held on Thursday, June 11 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Possible improvements to the corridor will be shared. Some of the study recommendations could be advanced on the TIP or be undertaken by the local municipalities, Fitzkee said previously.

In other business, the technical committee approved the following draft documents:

• Title VI policy statement that outlines the MPO’s outreach efforts to ensure staff and programs do not engage in any discrimination based on race, color, national origin, disability, or socioeconomic status.
• Air quality determination report that addresses how the MPO measures the impact of programmed and planned projects on air quality.
• Air quality resolution certifying that the MPO has completed to adhere to state and federal regulations for air quality conformity.
• MPO self-certification resolution that outlines all of the processes and requirements the MPO must follow to update TIP documents.
• 2027 TIP revision procedures document that describes the processes the MPO follows to adjust or change the TIP once adopted.
• The draft 2027-30 TIP highway and bridge and transit projects. These documents don’t become official until Oct. 1, the start of the 2027 federal fiscal year.

The next meeting of the MPO Technical Committee is scheduled for 9 a.m., Tuesday, July 21. The meeting will be held in room 207, Lebanon Municipal Building, 400 S. 8^th St., Lebanon, and is open to the public.