Crosswalk promotes Cranberry connectivity
CRANBERRY TWP — It may not be the thousands of cars that travel through the intersection of Routes 19 and 228, but the township is happy with its pedestrian crossing at St. Francis Way on Route 19.
At the same site where 77-year-old Thomas Jarzab of Oil City was struck and killed by a car while trying to cross the road last December, Cranberry tallied 60 activations of the pedestrian crossing signal between Nov. 18 and Nov. 29.
“You see there's a fair number of people walking across there, and we believe that number will increase once we get back to normal and the hotels are busy,” township manager Jerry Andree said. “But it's good; we're happy with it.”
The signal, which was activated this spring, was the culmination of two to three years of work, Andree said, as the process for procuring funds and buying the signal and poles takes a fair amount of time. Cranberry also wanted to ensure pedestrians had safe ways of moving once they had crossed the road, he said.
When Panda Express moved into its location on the Cranberry Mall side of the intersection, the township asked them to install sidewalks so that a pedestrian crossing would be possible.
“You don't want to drop somebody off in the middle of a major driveway,” Andree said. “And that intersection, between St. Francis and the mall, had no sidewalk.”
The St. Francis Way crosswalk is simply one example of Cranberry's increased attention to foot traffic in recent years, Andree said, as the township continually looks at its roads and sidewalks in an attempt to make them more pedestrian-friendly.
“We feel terrible when we see people trying to cross intersections that are not pedestrian-friendly, because we understand the frustrations they have,” Andree said. “We want people to be able to move around the township on foot as safely and efficiently as possible.”
One part of that is a committee that looks at what Cranberry calls the “missing links” between residential and commercial areas. Cranberry's budget each year includes a line item to connect these missing links.
The township's planning commission heads up that effort, with the help of a number of residents, and observes where people are walking along areas without sidewalks and uses data to figure out where sidewalks, pedestrian trails or crosswalks should be implemented.
“Just by looking on the road — it's what colleges do — you see where people cut through, the path through the weeds, and think, 'People are using this area,'” Andree said.
This year, for example, the township added a sidewalk along Franklin Road that they hope increases the connectivity between nearby housing developments and North Boundary Park.
That's just part of the goal, Andree said, to connect two dots: where people are, and where they want to go.
It's important to procure “access to the major centers of the community — the shopping centers, the parks,” he said. “As I said, the overall goal is to make the community more connected. There's different aspects of that connectivity.”
Cranberry's most ambitious roads project — the MSA Thruway — will also add ways for pedestrians and bicyclists to travel between Cranberry Woods and Cranberry Springs. Without that tunnel, they would have to cross nine lanes of traffic on Route 228, as well as cross-traffic between the two commercial developments.
Andree pointed toward a business moving into Cranberry Springs as an example of why multimodal connectivity is important. The business, according to Andree, said a big reason they selected that site is because there will soon be ways for the 6,000 workers in Cranberry Woods to get across Route 228 and explore the restaurants and other businesses in Cranberry Springs.
The manager said that when the township first focused on sidewalks, residents were wondering why Cranberry would spend its resources on such projects. But the population and traffic growth, along with tragic events like Jarzab's death, show why Cranberry has been focused on improving pedestrian safety and connectivity for more than 20 years.
