Cleona Borough requesting $65,000 in donations for flashing crosswalk signs

Cleona Borough is looking to raise around $65,000 in large donations from businesses to purchase flashing crosswalk signs for six intersections along U.S. Route 422.

The signs are called Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons, or RRFBs, and can be found at other crosswalks in Annville Township and Lebanon city. They have a button pedestrians can press, which turns on the flashing lights that signal to drivers that someone is crossing the road.

The six crossings would include the intersections between Route 422 and Christian, Garfield, Lincoln, Washington, Grant, and Harris streets.

“We have uniquely dangerous streets,” Mayor Matt Zechman said. “Cleona has strangely wide roads. We have two travel lanes, two turning lanes, and two shoulders. Because of it, it’s even harder for pedestrians to cross because our main road is so much wider, so pedestrians are very far out of the viewpoints of drivers.”

He said the $65,000 includes about $38,000 for the systems, money for the engineer to do the traffic study and planning, and more funding for the installation process. The total, according to Zechman, is on the higher end to ensure they can complete the work if it ends up being more expensive.

The borough is interested in large donations from businesses in case the project doesn’t work out. Then, it would be easier to refund a handful of large donations compared to giving back small amounts of money to more people. With a donation of at least $10,000, a crosswalk will be named after the business.

Zechman said he heard from a resident on the north side of town who has young kids she’d like to walk to school on nice days, but having to cross Route 422 prevents her.

RRFBs are meant to increase pedestrian safety, and this mother might be able to cross the street with her children more comfortably.

“A big part of it’s just not wanting those things to get worse and doing what we can to grab motorists’ attention and hopefully get cars to slow down and stop,” Zechman said.

Once funding for the signs is secured, he said the borough will go through the process with the borough engineer doing any required studies and reaching out to PennDOT. He called the department the last “boss battle,” though the borough has a 2023 PennDOT study that said the six included intersections would benefit from the RRFBs.

“(Cleona’s engineer) said there’s really no foreseeable reason why this project wouldn’t be approved,” Zechman said.

He said businesses interested in donating can reach out to him at mayor@cleonaborough.org or contact the borough office.