Credit: MapQuest
Falls Township has just made a significant effort to make walking on New Falls Road a little safer.
At the Board of Supervisors meeting in Falls Township Tuesday night, the board of five voted unanimously to begin an estimated $200,000 sidewalk project.
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The project, which will be put out to bid by the board to local contractors in the coming weeks, will take an estimated two to three months to complete once construction has begun. The sidewalks will fill in the gaps of existing sidewalks along New Falls Road and stretch on one side from Hood Boulevard to the Vermillion Hills section of the township.
It is the board’s hope that the sidewalks will help connect the Thornridge and Vermillion Hills communities to local shops and eateries and provide danger-free walking, providing a safe alternative to walking along or in the middle of the road.
While much of the existing parking lots that align the road will be configured to allow five foot wide sidewalks, a section of the sidewalk will lie between the tree line and the fence in front of the Levittown Continentals baseball field.
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According to Chairman Bob Harvie, a foot pathway has already been carved into the landscape and a paved path will just solidify that way of travel. Supervisor Jeff Boraski has asked Remington, Vernick & Beach, the engineering group on the project, to consider the use of lights if necessary, encouraging more safe, pedestrian traffic. Boraski has also asked the engineers to find out details on illuminating crosswalks with ‘a hand and walking man’ rather than just painted stripes.
The board is eager to begin the project, hoping to finish construction before yet another accident or fatality involving a pedestrian occurs.
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“None of us really want to wait until something happens and then wish we would have put sidewalks in when we all talked about it,” Harvie said.
In total, at least three pedestrians have been hit on the road in the last decade, many more have been injured, none however, have occurred in Falls Township.
Just two years ago, Sharon Rearick lost her son to the bustiling roadway, when he was hit by a driver along the Quincy Hollow border of the road in the middle of the night. Rearick has since begun a local charity, entitled Sidewalks Are For Everyone or SAFE. SAFE organizers have been working tirelessly with local officials and community members to help finance sidewalks along the road for over a year.
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When asked about her feelings of the project Rearick told LevittownNow.com she did her happy dance, “I’m very excited. I would like to think I had something to do with this but I think the issue has just finally been brought to everyones attention,” she said. The SAFE organization has come a long way since Rearick lost her son and she hopes the dangers will continue to be realized by other townships. “It started out as a grieving mother trying to do something right,” she said. “It just shows when you raise a little bit of commotion, people listen.”
With the prospects of McGrath Homes building an age qualified development on the St. Joseph the Worker property, it is the board’s hope that sidewalks there will help connect the town of Fallsington, making travel even safer over time for those who walk New Falls Road.
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New Falls Road may very well be named the Avenue of Levittown. First built to connect the towns of Newportville and Fallsington before the creation of Levittown, it’s culture has drastically changed over the last 60 years as more people, businesses and communities have sprung up around it. In a time when cars were the wave of the future, New Falls was never built or conceptually designed to accommodate pedestrians. The thoroughfare now resides in three townships, and is a daily road of travel for Levittowners and their families, both walking and not.
Editor’s Note: A previously published edition of this article stated that a portion of the sidewalks with lie behind a nearby shopping center, they will not. A portion of the sidewalk will although, lie between a tree line and fence by the baseball fields.
