PennDOT is preparing to invest another $16 million to improve the Wexford Flats section of Route 19, after having spent about half that much on the stretch in the last three years. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation engineers are drawing up plans for a center turning lane on Route 19 from Wallace Road in Pine to Old Perry Highway in McCandless. The work is expected to be completed in 2007. The goal is to make the Route 19 corridor -- used by about 26,000 motorists a day -- safer and easier to travel, PennDOT engineer Todd Kravits said. Work that began in the Wexford Flats area in the late 1990s has included widening Church Road and Route 910 between Church and Chapel roads; replacing the Perry Highway Bridge; and relocating North Chapel Road. "The main impetus for the work was the high accident rate," Kravits said. He declined to release PennDOT's accident statistics, but local police say the Route 19 corridor is a hot spot for vehicle crashes. Pine police data show that since January 2000, there have been 462 accidents -- an average of 10 a month -- from Wallace Road south to the McCandless line. The stretch is about 1.25 miles long. In a one-mile stretch in McCandless from the Pine line south to Old Perry Highway, there have been about 180 accidents -- an average of eight a month -- since January 2002. The latest PennDOT plan is an improvement over an earlier version, which called for shorter turning lanes and a 6-inch concrete median to divide much of the highway, said Ed Holdcroft, chairman of Pine Township Business Association. Although they don't all agree on what should be done, most business owners agree that more work on the Wexford Flats area is necessary, he said. "I think about 90 percent of the business owners realize the work is something we're going to have to put up with," said Holdcroft, who owns Hub Cap City along Route 19. Dominic Gigliotti, however, said he isn't so sure that the work will result in traffic safety. The owner of Pine Center, a Route 19 retail and office complex, said he believes the use of extra police patrols, instead, would cut down on speeding and crashes. Gigliotti said he also is concerned about PennDOT's plans to take 15 feet of private property from the road's west side; such action, he said, would eat up parking space. "I'm all for progress, but I don't want it to bury me," Gigliotti said. "If they take a row of my parking spaces, they might as well take my whole property."

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