Although I no longer attend public meetings and functions, I do venture out on excursions. Early Tuesday morning I decided to check out Rt. 22...Glad I got back in one piece. Traffic was heavy heading east, and heading west it was even worse, at 5 in the morning no less! Those warehouses need to be kept filled, and emptied, by an endless stream of tractor-trailers.
When State Senator Pat Browne endorsed that Rt. 22 widening money instead be used for Rt. 78 improvements, including making a new exit for Jaindl land interest warehouses, I complained about it here on this blog. When Browne lost the primary this past May, I could shed no tears. Under his direction too much of our state taxes have gone to enrich J.B. Reilly, and too much of new federal infrastructure money to benefit Jaindl Land interests. I don't think of Browne as corrupt, just too preoccupied with privately owned development, instead of the public good.
Next time you're on Rt. 22, wedged between speeding trucks, think about the Rt. 22 widening plans being again postponed.
photo/graphic:NYT
As for Pat Browne, his highly touted Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone (ANIZDA) has left Pennsylvania taxpayers with a shortfall in revenue of at least 150 million dollars. An estimated amount as would normally have been realized cumulatively had the ANIZDA plan never been created in the first place!
ReplyDeleteYes, Route 22 has become a traffic nightmare. But, our state budget just doesn’t have the money to put toward fixing things like this. Hmmm.
Not sure if the timing works, but wasn’t there an accident on I-78 on Tuesday morning? Plus it was the first sustained rainfall in a while.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if that added to what you experienced, but I do agree that 22 isn’t great even under the best of conditions.