Jul 7, 2017 By Harry Funk 3 min read

Besides local deliveries, trucks no longer are permitted on Thompsonville Road.

Following a unanimous Peters Township Council vote June 26, an ordinance prohibiting most truck traffic along the entire stretch of the street, from East McMurray to Old Washington roads, is in effect.

At the township’s request, after council member Gary Stiegel Jr. raised concerns, Traffic Planning and Design Inc. of Upper St. Clair conducted a truck study of Thompsonville. Michael Mudry, the firm’s senior project manager, noted in his remarks submitted to the state Department of Transportation:

• Thompsonville Road has several speed humps has traffic-calming devices that are not designed for large trucks and tractor-trailers.

• Pavement pushing and fatigue failures have occurred around the area of the stop sign at Schenley Drive.

• The concrete curb gutter along Thompsonville between East McMurray Road and Hoover Lane is damaged, which likely is attributable to the narrow width of the roadway.

• The curve radius near Waterfall Way is less than 50 feet, which is inadequate for trucks and causing vehicles to track off the cartway, the paved part of the road intended for traffic, on the inside of the curve.

In another matter involving township thoroughfares, council authorized an agreement with Traffic Planning and Design for completing a traffic plan for the future site of Peters Hill Park and the proposed new Peters Township High School, the former Rolling Hills Country Club property. The school district will split the overall cost of $16,900.

“This is an area where we can cooperate and actually save the community some funds,” township manager Paul Lauer said. “The school district would have to employ the services of a traffic engineer, given what they’re proposing. We would be employing a traffic engineer to review what they have proposed. And rather than for both of us to expend funds on this, what we have suggested is that we do this jointly.”

The study will examine the site’s points of intersection with East McMurray and Center Church roads, along with the alignment of the main internal road and “whether it’s a public street or private drive,” Lauer told council.

Members of council voted against implementing a township traffic calming committee recommendation to install two radar speed displays on Old Washington Road, where traffic-calming devices were installed in December to prompt motorists to observe the 25-mph speed limit.

In a follow-up study, Mudry determined that 85th percentile speeds – defined as the speed on a road at or below which 85 percent of the motor vehicles travel – along two blocks of the road had not “decreased below the traffic-calming threshold of 32 mph.”

At the start of Old Washington Road traffic-calming efforts, the threshold was 7 mph above the speed limit. Because the threshold since has been raised to 10 mph, to match PennDOT’s standards, council opted to reject the measure.