Holme Avenue bridge work expected to finish July 2012

About 25 people attended last night’s meeting of the Holme Circle Civic Association, where John Buckley of Buckley Construction gave residents an update about construction on the Holme Avenue bridge.

The PennDOT-funded repairs will make the bridge structurally stable. “In my opinion, it should be closed,” Buckley said of the current state of the bridge.

Instead, traffic patterns will shift over the next year and a half to allow for the bridge to remain open. But as Buckley explains in the video below, homeowners in the stretch of the avenue between the Circle and Longford Street will take the brunt of the traffic and noise.

“I plan to get through this phase as fast as I can,” Buckley said of Phase I, which will bring speeding traffic about 11 feet from the curb of Holme Avenue houses.

Residents of those homes have already dealt with cars speeding and weaving through the now one-lane bridge marked with traffic cones. Though the posted speed limit it 30, Buckley said he’s seen the speed tracking sign read as high as 63mph during the day.

PennDOT, he said, has offered to pay for police assistance to calm traffic in the area, and another speed tracking sign is en route. While temporary speed bumps aren’t likely, one neighbor on that block of Holme Avenue suggested installing a stop sign on Holme Avenue at the Arthur Street intersection.

Not helping matters is the temporary outage of all the traffic lights on Holme Circle. While stop signs have been installed for now, Civic President Joe Razler said he hasn’t been able to get an answer as to when the lights will be working again. Weekend winds knocked them out.

Buckley liked the idea of a stop sign at Arthur Street, hoping one would slow down cars enough for Holme Avenue residents to back out of their driveways. He said of presenting the idea to PennDOT: “I’ll even demand a stop sign.”

Correction: We initially reported John Buckley as Jeff Buckley. We regret the error.