HONESDALE, PA — The Honesdale Borough Council heard the details of a series of proposed Main Street streetscape improvements during a meeting on Monday, March 23. Details of the proposed improvements, which would concentrate around the section of Main Street between 12th and 10th Streets, include improved sight lines, enhanced pedestrian crosswalks and the suggestion to make up for lost parking spots on Main Street by making 10th and 11th Streets one-way.

Jason Wood, a consultant with Woodland Design Associates (WDA), presented current schematics for the project. WDA has been working with the Greater Honesdale Partnership (GHP), a group representing the borough’s businesses, as well as with borough council on the design of the project.

As it exists now, Main Street has multiple safety issues, explained Wood. Parking spaces are located too close to crosswalks and entry streets, making it difficult for pedestrians to see oncoming cars as they move to cross the street. The same line of sight issues make it hard for cars to pull out onto Main Street, and make it difficult for cars coming down Main Street to see both pedestrians and entering vehicles.

Local businesses want to keep their driveways exiting onto Main Street, as well as side street access, said Wood. The line of sight requirements for those entry points, as well as those for pedestrian crosswalks (all mandated by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT)), mean that, as the project team redesigns Main Street, it has to take away some of the parking spaces that exist along that street now.

That requirement has its own challenges, Wood explained. “It was noted several times by the Greater Honesdale Partnership committee and the borough folks we met with that removing those spaces to maintain side street [and] driveways’ line of sight was viewed as a negative.”

The solution? An additional change, to make the entering streets one-way. 12th and 10th Streets will flow from Church Street to Main, and 11th Street will flow from Main Street to Church.

The new one-way side streets will allow for additional parking spots along them, due to the ability to take up more of the street real estate by angling the parking spaces and packing in more cars. Currently, that stretch of town from 12th Street to 10th Street has 39 parking spaces, estimated Wood. Take away the required Main Street parking spots and introduce angled parking along the side streets, and that overall number goes up to 47.

“It’s just an estimate, but it’s about a 20 percent increase in parking spots,” said Wood.

Additionally, the one-way streets would help with safety along that stretch of Main Street. Wood mentioned that currently, traffic going from Chapel Street to 10th Street—and especially traffic going from 10th Street to Chapel Street, a move that requires cars to drive against traffic while crossing two lanes—is a safety risk. That move wouldn’t be possible under the new configuration.

Nearly $2 million in grant funding has been secured for the design and the construction of the project, most of it from PennDOT.

Details from the proposed plan show the extent of changes to the current street layout, including the removal of current parking spaces and the reorientation of the crosswalk at Chapel Street.

Details from the proposed plan show the extent of changes to the current street layout, including the removal of current parking spaces.

Details from the proposed plan show the extent of changes to the current street layout, including the removal of current parking spaces.

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A long time coming

Borough leaders praised the proposed changes.

“We’ve got a lot of time and effort put into this,” said Brian Wilkins, chair of the GHP design committee for the project. “We’ve really cleaned up the ability to see when you’re coming out of 11th Street and looking this way, or you’re coming out of 10th Street and looking that way. You’ll be able to see in the street, and also pedestrians will be visible.”

Wilkins mentioned that, currently, the crosswalk at 10th Street is around 40 feet long. With an upgraded configuration and pedestrian bump cuts, where the sidewalks extend further out into the street at the crosswalks, pedestrians will only be in traffic for around 22 feet, a much safer distance.

“The goal of this design all the way through has been to make it a safe environment for people of Honesdale who want to come here and shop, and be part of the downtown community, and make it safer for pedestrians so they can be seen,” said Wilkins.

Council member Jim Hamill said that the work to improve the streetscape is part of the borough’s downtown revitalization plan.

“That is to help really re-energize the economy to attract landlords and tenants of these vibrant businesses downtown, provide for jobs, provide for housing and really vault Honesdale into the next century and beyond,” Hamill said.

Mayor Derek Williams said it had taken seven years of intensive planning to reach this point, in addition to another seven or eight years of discussions about improving safety in town. Without all that time spent, the borough wouldn’t be able to get millions in grant funding for the project, he said.

The whole process had involved a lot of learning, he added.

“This needs to happen,” he said. “We all know it’s unsafe and uncomfortable to be walking across the street and driving downtown a lot of times because of the sight distances.”

However, the project team learned as they implemented the necessary changes about the value people placed on parking downtown, he said. That learning inspired the side-street suggestions.

“Sure enough, those two things come together, the plan can get massaged because we have awesome partners at Woodland and GHP and PennDOT, and now we have a net positive in parking, at least being proposed by alternating those one-way streets, and that’s in addition to the additional safety aspects of being able to cross the street in that way,” he said.