Officials agree that the section of Interstate 80 that runs through Stroudsburg and its nearby suburbs needs to be improved. They disagree on what that means.
The 3.5-mile section of highway carries a steady stream of long-haul trucks, tourists heading to the Poconos, motorists passing through between the Midwest and New York City area, and plenty of locals running errands or driving to work.
PennDOT’s traffic numbers say up to 70,500 vehicles per day use the section between exit 303 in Stroud Township to the bridge over Broadhead Creek between Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg. The number is expected to grow to more than 130,000 by 2045.
A project to reconstruct 3.5 miles of the highway, widen it and reconfigure interchanges are being designed to address congestion and safety issues, PennDOT said in a news release.
Total cost: $935 million.
Preparation for the impending work is already under way around Stroudsburg. At Dreher Avenue and I-80, an abandoned building that used to house a gas station and garage has a hand-made sign alerting customers to the business’s new location across town. Across the street, a former Perkins restaurant in the path of construction also sits empty.
Property owners are receiving eminent domain notices that part, or all, of their tracts will be taken for the project. Homes that have trees and shrubs keeping the highway out of sight from the backyard may soon have sound walls mere steps from their backdoors. Some homes feature anti-project lawn signs.
For critics of the project, there are plenty of concerns. They include the closure of one of the exits, potential loss of wetlands and wildlife, and effects on local businesses and property owners.
State Rep. Tarah Probst, D-Monroe, who has been a critic since she was mayor of Stroudsburg, thinks I-80 can be improved without affecting the neighborhoods along the highway.
“It’s a joke. It’s a waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Probst,. “Fix the things that need to get fixed. We need to fix our bridges, you absolutely need 12-foot shoulders and we could use longer on and off ramps.
“They can do all of that without disturbing a wetland, without narrowing creeks without removing our trees in the Poconos, which hold 20-100 gallons of water,” she said. “We had a flood here in 1955 and we’re going to flood again if this project goes through.”
Stroud Township Manager Steve Fylstra said the proposal isn’t perfect, but it should improve safety.
“A lot of on and off ramps in the area are very short and cause accidents,” he said. “Improving those would be great, which is a lot of what this project does. [A proposed bridge] from [Interstate] 80 to [Route] 209 is a very big, long, sweeping bridge and there are comments that it doesn’t need to be so extreme.
“We’re not engineers and they have their own protocols they have to follow in construction,” he said. “There’s not a lot you can do about that.”
The project in depth
The section in question was one of the first parts of I-80 to be built in Pennsylvania, opening in 1963. Exits include Route 611 south, Route 209 south, West Main Street, Dreher Avenue, Park Avenue and Broad Street.
The highway here shows its older design: It is four lanes wide with a narrow median, short acceleration and deceleration lanes at the exits, and tight shoulders that range from 1-10 feet wide. The bridges and pavement also are showing their age and are in poor condition.
“Due to deteriorated roadway and bridge components the highway needs full ‘from the ground up’ reconstruction,” PennDOT says.
The plan is to widen I-80 with three lanes in each direction, as well as shoulders that are 10-12 feet wide, which is considered the modern standard for interstate highways. It will be built in three sections, beginning in Stroud Township in 2026. Each section will take about four years to complete.
“There are no final right-of-way plans yet for any of the three sections planned,” PennDOT District 5 spokesperson Ron Young told The Morning Call. “The final ROW plan for the first section is anticipated to be ready this fall.”
Access to Route 611 and Route 209, which are presently limited to one direction, will be from both east and west I-80.
Other planned parts of the project include the closure of exit 306 at Dreher Avenue and the acquisition of about two dozen properties and partial acquisition of more than 200 parcels to accommodate sideroads, noise walls, road grading and drainage.
“Exit 306 [Dreher Avenue] will be permanently closed due to the need to maintain spacing between exits and accommodate traffic weaving,” Young said. “To compensate, PennDOT is proposing to construct the Dreher Avenue Connector, which will link traffic from the Dreher Avenue neighborhood to West Main Street and to the I-80 interchange at exit 304.”
Though PennDOT studied a 20-mile stretch of I-80 from the I-380 intersection in Tobyhanna Township to the Delaware Water Gap bridge at the New Jersey border more than 15 years ago, it concluded the section between exits 303 and 307 needed the most attention.
A ‘2-pound bag’
Probst disagrees with that, saying I-80 regularly encounters backups around its intersection with Route 33 at Bartonsville in Hamilton and Pocono townships.
“My analogy is you’re stuffing 3 pounds of sausage into a 2-pound bag. It just doesn’t work,” she said. “So what we originally have been fighting for since 2015 on a daily basis is in the summer, the Bartonsville interchange is always backed up. That is where you start hitting the resorts, you start hitting Bartonsville, Tannersville, Scotrun that also have a very large median, between 80 east and west.”
Probst said the highway should be six lanes from Bartonsville to I-380, not through Stroudsburg, which she says is safe enough at four lanes, noting that Monroe County ranks 44th out of 67 counties for highway crashes.
She is in favor of fixing the bridges and having 12-foot shoulders.
Probst also disagrees with closing the Dreher Avenue exit and worries about woods at the Park Avenue exit that feature a vernal pool, and other wetlands with wildlife such as bog turtles.
Young said PennDOT is aware of concerns among some residents about environmental and property impacts.
“The Federal Highway Administration provides leadership, stewardship, oversight and guidance to states to administer the Federal Aid Highway Program,” he said. “The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is in compliance with all federal and state laws, rules and regulations for the I-80 Reconstruction Project.
“PennDOT will comply with all waterway permits and water quality certifications for the project construction. PennDOT will also conform to all Army Corps of Engineers rules, regulations and permitting requirements for flood plains,” he said.
Fylstra said Stroud Township didn’t agree with every proposal for the project, but said PennDOT worked with the township. He said changes were made to the plan for Bridge Street, which connects Route 611 with West Main Street, passing under I-80.
“There’s an odd intersection, which is part of this project that they’re fixing,” he said. “It’s now going to be a straightforward T intersection.”
He said the adjacent Pocono Park Drive was going to be made into a cul-de-sac, but that was changed after concerns were raised about plowing.
The redesigned exit 303 to Route 611 will have access to both directions of I-80, but will take away land from the township’s recycling center.
“Some of the biggest hits in Stroud Township are actually right at our municipal recycling yard,” Fylstra said. “They’re taking, taking a good chunk of our property, but they’ve worked with us.”
Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com.
