Traffic was extremely light last week during a weekday, mid-morning, on Forster Street, despite one lane being closed for utility work.
Right now in Harrisburg, an important experiment is taking place.
This experiment isn’t by design, but by circumstance, the result of a major utility project in the city.
For the past month, much of westbound Forster Street, from the Capitol Complex down to the Taylor Bridge, has been reduced to two lanes. And you know what? It’s been fantastic.
I don’t mean fantastic for the poor residents living around Green and Forster streets, who’ve had to endure jackhammering, heavy machinery and beep-beep-beeping starting at sunrise.
But it’s fantastic for the city, because it’s offered a real-world test of a slimmed-down Forster Street, one in which the street is reduced, in each direction, from three to two lanes.
This view of Forster Street is from late September during “rush hour”: 5:30 p.m.
Now, I’ve long known that six through lanes on Forster were far too many (expanding to an unreal eight lanes at the corner of 3rd Street). I live on one side of that notorious, dangerous dividing line and work on the other, so have crossed the street hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
I consider myself something of an expert on that particular sea of asphalt.
Before covid, Forster got busy for short periods during rush hours. Since covid, it’s basically never busy, even at 8 in the morning or 5 in the afternoon. Reduced to two lanes in one direction, traffic still flows freely. At other times, it’s little more than a trickle.
Even with Capital Region Water’s major utility project on site, the traffic seems so much slower, the drivers more careful, and the narrower street so much safer.
So, PennDOT are you paying any attention?
State engineers—use your imaginations. Just think what you could so with that real estate. Instead of unnecessary, superfluous traffic lanes, you could have bike lanes, rain gardens, bumpouts, green space, etc. You could be heroes to residents, pedestrians, bicyclists, businesses and the environment.
Mid-morning on Forster Street, from Green to N. 2nd streets
But you don’t have to wait for a firm plan either. Start today.
You know those dividers that are currently blocking the right-hand lane? Leave them there. Until you come up with a permanent solution, the road will be narrower, the street safer—and it will no longer divide the city of Harrisburg in half. After 70 years apart, downtown and Midtown would be reunited.
I wouldn’t make this argument if six lanes were actually needed. But they’re not, and it’s not even a close call. Meanwhile, the wide road and excessive lanes encourage speeding and reckless driving, leading to crashes, injuries and even fatalities. And it divides and harms the city of Harrisburg.
It is time—today—to begin to fix Forster Street.
Lawrance Binda is publisher and editor of TheBurg.
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