People look at PennDOT plans during a public meeting in City Council chambers on Tuesday.
A plan to update the historic Market Street Bridge in Harrisburg has been changed since its proposal, and was presented to the public on Tuesday.
Harrisburg hosted a public meeting in city hall, with a handful of community members attending to share feedback on the updated proposal by PennDOT, which now includes eliminating one traffic lane on the bridge.
PennDOT announced in November 2021 that it would rehab the bridge, which spans the Susquehanna River, connecting Harrisburg to Wormleysburg, as well as City Island in between. As part of the project, PennDOT will rehab the historic bridge arches, replace the deck and sidewalks on the eastern bridge and construct a new deck and beams on the western bridge.
Originally, PennDOT’s plan would have maintained the current four traffic lanes. However, the most recent proposal would eliminate one lane of traffic on both the bridge from Harrisburg to City Island and the bridge from City Island to the west shore.
PennDOT also plans to build a separate utility bridge along the south side of the Market Street Bridge that would also have a 14-foot-wide pedestrian and bicycle path. This part of the plan was added in 2022, due to public feedback. In August 2023, PennDOT held a public meeting on the project, during which several members of the cycling community expressed support for the multimodal infrastructure.
At the meeting, Senators President Kevin Kulp expressed concern about the effect that the lane elimination would have on traffic flow to the island.
“As a business that depends on people being about to get to City Island somewhat efficiently, it’s already challenging in the current configuration so anything that makes it more challenging is going to hurt,” Kulp said.
According to Tri-County Regional Planning Commission Director Andrew Bomberger, the change in PennDOT’s plan came after the commission completed a 2023 study downtown that determined that three lanes would be safer by slowing traffic.
City Engineer Joel Seiders said that the updated configuration would also work well with a potential two-way conversion of the section of Market Street near the bridge, which is under consideration as well.
But Kulp is worried that baseball game attendees will have a tougher time getting to the island, as both bridges will only have one lane of incoming traffic.
“If people can’t get there, we can’t operate,” he said.
Seiders said that the city will take all of the public comment to PennDOT, which will ultimately decide on the final configuration. PennDOT is still in the design process, and Seiders estimated that they may have the design finalized by August.
No representative from PennDOT was present at the meeting.
Other attendees shared concerns about maintaining the historic integrity of the bridge and about the proposed path on the utility bridge.
Rachelle Lowe said that she wasn’t a fan of how the utility bridge would block the view of the historic bridge. She thought that it may be better for utilities to run under the river.
“I just don’t think it looks good. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” she said.
Cyclist advocate Ross Willard liked that the plan included multimodal infrastructure, but proposed using the CAT bridge further down Front Street that is currently unused, rather than building a new utility bridge.
“The CAT bridge is already there,” he said. “I’d look at all of the bridges holistically.”
According to Seiders, PennDOT’s Market Street Bridge project will begin in 2027 and likely run until somewhere between 2032-34.
The bridge will remain open during construction, but with fewer traffic lanes during certain phases.
For more information on the Market Street Bridge rehabilitation plan, visit the project website.
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