Median strip indeed interferes with emergency vehicles

F&M College, supported by the City's Public Works department, a few weeks ago constructed a concrete median strip in the middle lane of 3-lane, 2-way Harrisburg Pike, between College Square and College Avenue.

This median strip - which has several poles and signs protruding from it and will soon contain shrubbery — blocks cars and larger vehicles from using the middle lane. This is a state highway and has no shoulders on either side that vehicles can use to get out of the line of traffic. Since there is usually traffic – heavy at certain times of the day - on this stretch of roadway, the middle lane previously was used as an emergency lane for ambulances, fire trucks and other early responder vehicles. It also served as a stacking turning lane, which eased traffic congestion as vehicles making turns onto Race Ave. could move earlier out of the through-traffic lane during peak times of traffic.

On Sunday afternoon, Feb. 3, I walked to the Iron Hill Brewery at College Row on Harrisburg Pike, which faces this median strip. Two young women were seated on a bench beside the Brewery. In answer to my question, they told me that they are F&M students and live in College Row. I immediately asked what they think of the median strip.

One of them said, “It causes a lot of back-up traffic in the middle of the day. Ambulances have a lot of trouble getting through because there is no middle lane.” The other student agreed with her remark.

I told them that Mayor Gray had written to a resident of Columbia Ave. that the purpose of the median strip is to “ease congestion”. This student had a strong response, “It’s doing just the opposite.”

At this point, a young man joined them (who appeared to be a couple years older than the women) and I asked him if he is connected with the College. He said he is a student. I asked him what he thinks about the median. He said, “It makes it safer to cross [the highway]. We [students] can stand on the median now to cross.”

The women told him that the college doesn’t want students to cross in the middle of the block and mentioned the new no-crossing sign on a pole in the middle of the median strip. I asked them if, before the median strip was built, they had ever gotten an email from college officials telling them, for their own protection, not to cross in the middle of the block. They said they had never gotten such an email. I asked them if they ever got an email encouraging them to use the overhead bridge, and they said they never received an email about that either.

They talked about the slow and unpredictable walk / don’t walk signals at College Ave., College Square and Race Ave. They said that they didn’t think that the reason for the median strip was student safety (else why wouldn’t the college, from the beginning of the school year, have addressed student crossing habits and done something about the obsolete walk / don’t-walk signals, as well as painting crosswalk markings at College Square, where there are none?) They said that they thought the real reason for the medians with shrubbery is “to make all of this [area] look more appealing”.

(I was reminded of Goal Two in the 2004 Campus Master Plan: “Present an inviting arrival experience through gates and sequences with beautiful edges and thresholds.” Is this the underlying and unstated reason for the median?)

These students knew that the overhead bridge is going to be taken down, but did not know that a second median strip between College Square and Race Ave. has already been approved by the City and PennDOT. Neither did they know that a third one between College Avenue and the entrance to the Barnstormers Stadium is being considered.

What these students were saying confirms what some city residents had been saying for months to the City and to PennDOT, but local and state officials alike disregarded these concerns and approved the project, and in so doing placed private benefit over public interest.

Earlier in the afternoon, I saw for myself how this median strip is affecting ambulances.

I was standing on the corner of Harrisburg Pike and College Ave., and I saw an ambulance with flashing lights in the east-bound lane and approaching College Square. Being Sunday afternoon, traffic was light and there was only one car in this lane, in front of the ambulance. Because of the median strip, the ambulance had to share this single lane with the car. The car cleared the median strip, and the ambulance veered around the car into the short left turn lane, barely clearing the curb at the end of the strip. The ambulance clearly had to slow down because of this one car. One can only imagine how much time would have lost if this had been at one of those times that the College student spoke of, “when traffic is backed up.”

Before the median strip went in, I often witnessed ambulances, with sirens sounding and lights flashing, go straight down the middle lane of this stretch of Harrisburg Pike – which is the most direct route between the Health Campus and LGH. Emergency vehicles no longer have that option, thanks to F&M’s and the City’s “improvements” on Harrisburg Pike.