I-81 (Scranton, Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre: home, construction, school)

[SteelCityRising]

Just for a change of pace from the usual "I'm moving from NJ to PA; Help me!" messages, I thought I'd actually pose my own question. Does anyone know the status of the proposed six-lane widening of I-81 in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre? I've been all over PA, and from what I can tell, the five WORST congested roadways are Route 22 in the Lehigh Valley, the Schuylkill Expressway between Philly and its 'burbs, I-83 between Harrisburg and York, I-80 between Stroudsburg and NJ, and I-81 between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. As a daily I-81 commuter, I'm becoming fed up with the rush-hour tie-ups that are occurring all too frequently anymore. PENNDOT has been promising us that it will be widening I-81 now for YEARS, yet nothing has been done. Now that traffic counts near the Scranton International Airport are hovering at around 80,000 vehicles daily (For an intended capacity of just 40,000), I'm beginning to wonder what will happen to this roadway as traffic is expected to increase at the rate of a few thousand new daily vehicles each year?!

[sreinc]

It is a rough commute but the six lane...not in the immediate future that I am aware. However, it could just start tomorrw. PenDot doesn't announce very far in advance. There are trouble spots so you'd have to be more specific. What time of travel....8 am, earlier, later? 5 pm return, earlier, later??? Where would you be coming from? Where are you going to? This would help in giving more specific information about traffic. Davis St is a nightmare after 8 am and around 5 pm. I commute my children to school every morning down 81. We drive from Scranton leaving at 7 am and They come back about 4 PM...not half as many issues. And the issues are not constant and/or daily. I make two round trips from Scranton to Kingston/Forty Fort daily and there are not many issues at those times of day.

[SteelCityRising]

I commute several times a day between Wilkes-Barre and Pittston, namely at 7:30 AM, 11:30 AM, and 5:15 PM (The morning and evening rush). The stretch between Davis Street and Pittston especially has to be the MOST God-awful stretch of roadway at rush-hour! I'm starting to play Enya while driving to keep me relaxed; I just don't see how we can justify spending billions to establish cell phone service in Iraq while our own domestic infrastructure continues to decay! LOL! (Did you get stuck in that mess this morning at rush-hour on I-81 Northbound in Moosic?) Why PENNDOT has to schedule lane restrictions for rush-hour is beyond me! Isn't it safer for them to be out working when it is NOT peak hours anyways?

[mjk1093]

I fear no man... but I fear I-81.

[openless]

i-83 between york and harrisburg is a joke. i intentionally will drive 10 miles out of the way to get around that mess! the realy problem, is that the exits are so close together, and there is only room for 4 or 5 cars on the on-ramps. very very not fun. you can sit for hours and hours for nothing. if there is an accident, it takes the police hours to OPEN 1 lane! not both! they jsut stand there and do nothing. the local news media always shows up and they interview them on-scene. They love it. meanehile all the motorists are stranded. This area suffers from many ill concieved road schemes. instead of spending 100 million to build a great road that will last 100 years they spend 2 million to build a road that lasts 5 years, then they spend 2 years re-paving it. SAD SAD SAD.

[jdhall1]

I agree. I-81 and 83 are horrible. When I was down in York for college, I regularly had to stop and wait to get onto the highway after getting at the bottom of the onramp and then having to floor my jeep to get up to highway speed. I-81 has no fun either, when I either picked it up in Scranton via I-84 or near Lebanon via I-78 depending on what what I decided to go to or home from York. There were too many tractor trailers on the road slowing everybody down and the exits in the Scranton/Wilkesbarre area are too close together, as are the onramps.
I-81 is pretty bad around and south of I-80. It is only 2 lanes and each direction and even with climbing lanes, it still was no pleasure to drive on. I even stopped going through Scranton because all of the roadwork in the middle of nowhere south of Hazleton.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by jdhall1

I agree. I-81 and 83 are horrible. When I was down in York for college, I regularly had to stop and wait to get onto the highway after getting at the bottom of the onramp and then having to floor my jeep to get up to highway speed. I-81 has no fun either, when I either picked it up in Scranton via I-84 or near Lebanon via I-78 depending on what what I decided to go to or home from York. There were too many tractor trailers on the road slowing everybody down and the exits in the Scranton/Wilkesbarre area are too close together, as are the onramps.
I-81 is pretty bad around and south of I-80. It is only 2 lanes and each direction and even with climbing lanes, it still was no pleasure to drive on. I even stopped going through Scranton because all of the roadwork in the middle of nowhere south of Hazleton.

The tractor-trailer traffic is indeed terrible along I-81! I know that as a consumer, we all need trucks to transport our products to us, but the truckers along the stretch of I-81 between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre have to be among the most aggressive outside of NYC! I can't tell you how many times I look in my rearview mirror and see a tractor-trailer literally a foot from my rear bumper! Now, what would happen if I suddenly had to slam on the brakes for stopped traffic, construction, a deer, etc.? My small sedan would be mincemeat, and I'd be roadkill! Just the other day I was getting off at Exit 175 from the nortbound direction, the Pittston exit, and traffic was so heavy at this time of day (5:15 PM), that traffic was backed up the entire offramp and just about onto the highway! I watched in horror in my rearview mirror as a tractor-trailer, traveling too quickly on I-81, came barrelling down the downhill offramp on the right-hand shoulder to avoid pummeling the cars like dominoes! Now, what would have happened if a car was broken down along the shoulder?

If you haven't been through my region on I-81 lately, notice the newer signs along the road, erected by PennDOT, which warn drivers about how dangerous our 25-mile stretch or so of "freeway" is! They've put up signs such as "Don't Tailgate", "Aggressive Driver; High Crash Area", and "Fines Doubled Corridor!" As a taxpayer, I'm wondering if it wouldn't have been better for PennDOT to do a study to determine WHY there are daily crashes occurring along this stretch of highway instead of just warning people to be careful and moving on? My guess would be that the aggressive driving stems from having a 55-mile per hour speed limit on a four-lane highway that is at TWICE its intended capacity! When you're in a rush, as I am, to always commute between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, it can be really irritating to have 18-wheelers on your rear bumper as there is a pokey in a Cadillac in front of you doing the EXACT same speed in the passing lane as the right-lane for mile after mile! All I hear about is "there's no funding for an additional lane of travel." Well, then how can we justify pork barrel projects in our state, which include funding a feasibility study for an inflatable dam on a polluted waterway in Wilkes-Barre or investigating a new polka museum? Meanwhile, people are DYING on I-81 at rush-hour! The same problems occur on many other outdated state roadways, including I-83 and Route 22! Why is PA so far behind the rest of the nation with its infrastructure?

[jdhall1]

The last time I was through the Scranton region was in the middle of April and the signs that you mentioned were there. Those signs didn't do much expect waste money. Traffic wasn't a problem, becuse I was driving through there around 8:30 or so at night but I can see how bad it can be durning the rushhour.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by jdhall1

The last time I was through the Scranton region was in the middle of April and the signs that you mentioned were there. Those signs didn't do much expect waste money. Traffic wasn't a problem, becuse I was driving through there around 8:30 or so at night but I can see how bad it can be durning the rushhour.

Well, regardless, traffic is still freely-moving at rush-hour as well; it's just bumper-to-bumper. You can still expect to commute between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre at 5:15 PM at a steady 55-mile-per-hour clip without stopping, but also expect to have people tailgating you and weaving in and out of traffic as if it were the Auto-Bahn! LOL! Ultimately, PennDOT either needs to establish a mass transit alternative between the two cities or expand existing roadways to handle increasing volumes of traffic. Another alternative is to make the stretch of I-476 between Clarks Summit and Wilkes-Barre, which roughly parallels I-81, toll-free. I don't care what they do; all I know is that in a few more years traffic on this stretch at rush-hour will deteriorate to the point where it WILL be "stop-and-go!"