Mar 21, 2019 4 min read

McMURRAY – Building a road system to serve the needs sufficiently for a new Peters Township High School is encountering some complications.

The school board voted 5-3 Monday night following a prolonged discussion to Hayes Design Group to provide additional services to modify the design of one of the access roads to the school, at an estimated cost of more than $29,000.

The road in question would represent a point of entry toward the southern terminus of Rolling Hills Drive, the street to be constructed through the former Rolling Hills Country Club property, roughly bisecting the halves now owned by the school district and municipality.

At issue is the potential for traffic backing up onto East McMurray Road near its intersection with Rolling Hills Drive when drivers are attempting to turn left onto the access road prior to the start of the school day.

As previously envisioned, the access road would have been located far enough away from East McMurray to prevent a proliferation of such occurrences. But circumstances have led to a design that places a relocated East McMurray about 150 feet north of the path called for in the original design, which did not receive approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The school district plans to build a second road to access the high school close to Rolling Hills Drive’s intersection with Center Church Road, toward the northwest corner of the property.

The cost of designing and implementing a new configuration for the southern access road is in the neighborhood of $200,000, according to Superintendent Jeannine French.

Voting for the design modification were school board members Minna Allison, Lisa Anderson, Rolf Briegel, Ronald Dunlevy and Thomas McMurray, board president. Opposing were the Rev. Jamison Hardy, William Merrell and Daniel Taylor.

“This board was really thoughtful in the planning of this southern road, and the traffic flow of the buses and the dropoffs. We had so many meetings discussing how we could make this the best possible roadway,” Allison said. “I think this is actually one of those things that if we don’t get right, is going to come back, and people are going to wonder, why didn’t you spend that money and make this the most efficient way of traveling through the property?”

Dunlevy, who chairs the board’s buildings and grounds committee, agreed.

“I, for one, would not want to have this school built and hear the wrath of all the community about how we screwed the traffic up,” he said. “I really think that we would be wise to spend that extra money, have the flow that we so carefully planned for and keep the flow of traffic in a safe pattern.”

Hardy questioned the overall impact of the southern access point as currently designed.

“The only time that this becomes an issue is dropoff in the morning. It does not become an issue at pickup in the afternoon, because your traffic flow is out, rather than in,” he said.

He offered a proposal for school administration to consider:

“We should ask the township if a gate for morning dropoff preventing use of that southern road for dropoff would be sufficient, therefore allowing us to utilize that left-turn lane at other times, day and night, weekends and so forth.”

Hardy, chairman of the board’s finance committee, cautioned the district against spending excessive amounts of money on change orders as the high school project progresses.

In Taylor’s opinion, changing the design for the point of access is not worth the outlay.

“I’m not saying that we should not have the southern road. I’m saying that we shouldn’t move it,” he said. “It’s not going to make a difference on (East) McMurray Road.”