Apr 25, 2017 3 min read

A recent near-fatal wreck is spurring the latest bid by Cecil Township officials to get additional traffic-control measures at an intersection first responders say is the site of frequent crashes.

Township officials said the two-vehicle crash March 26 – when police credited passersby with saving the lives of a Bulger woman and her three children when they pulled them from a burning Jeep Wrangler after it collided with a car – shows the dangers to motorists at the junction of O’Hare and Chartiers Run roads with Route 980 near Muse.

“There’s a reason why these accidents are happening,” said Ronnie Zombeck, president and former chief of Muse Fire Company No. 2. “There’s hundreds of intersections in Cecil Township, and this is the problem intersection.”

Drivers coming from O’Hare and Chartiers Run roads face stop signs there. State transportation officials – who would have to sign off on changes at the intersection – and local officials have disagreed for years about whether making the intersection a four-way stop would make the junction safer.

Joe Szczur, district executive of PennDOT District 12 – which includes Washington, Greene, Fayette and Westmoreland counties – said the agency is planning another study of that intersection.

“For some reason, people are making decisions at that intersection that are not proper, and we need to figure out how to help that,” Szczur said.

After the most recent crash, Cecil officials appealed directly to elected state officials.

“If no improvements are approved, we feel that additional crashes that could have been avoided will continue to occur,” township manager Don Gennuso wrote in a letter to Rep. Jason Ortitay, Sen. Camera Bartolotta and Gov. Tom Wolf earlier this month.

Ortitay said a meeting involving state and local officials regarding the intersection is planned for May 3.

“I get (locals’) frustration,” he said. “I certainly can feel how passionate and involved they are about this.”

A study Gateway Engineers prepared last year – which Gennuso included with his letter – stated there were 22 accidents there from 2011 through 2015.

Szczur said it’s unclear what caused the most recent accident.

Local officials maintain the additional stop signs would help at the intersection.

“It’s very frustrating from our perspective not to be able to fix something that very clearly needs to be fixed,” said Supervisor Cindy Fisher.

In a June letter arguing for the four-way stop, Gateway Engineers cited “existing deficiencies in sight distance for the stop-controlled approaches,” “a pattern of angle crashes involving motorists coming from the stop-controlled approaches” and “a significant amount of traffic.”

PennDOT, however, disagreed.

“Engineering judgment was also used to determine that a stop sign is not appropriate at this intersection,” according to a response from Szczur. He added stop signs at the wrong places can cause more crashes. “We are recommending that additional enforcement be added in this area to control speeding.”

In an interview, Szczur said PennDOT lowered the speed limit in that area of 980 about 10 years ago to 35 mph at the request of the township – which he said should be enough considering the distance drivers can see as they approach the intersection.

Supervisors Chairman Tom Casciola hopes PennDOT’s experts will reconsider their position: “It’s a shame it has to be something like this – maybe they’ll have a change of heart now.”