Enhancing Safety on PA's Historic Swamp Road

Since the 1700s, the rolling, five-mile stretch of Swamp Road (SR 2036), from Apple Hill Road in Wrightstown Township east toward the Newtown Bypass in Newtown Township, has served residents of the Delaware Valley. The once rural artery is now the perferred access route for hundreds of quarry trucks heading toward I-95; 9,000 students attending adjacent Bucks County Community College; and countless local residents, eager to hold onto the rural character of the country road.

Working with the local community, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) District 6-0 has initiated several improvement projects to enhance safety and drainage along Swamp Road, developing plans for a new culvert east of Worthington Mill Road and rehabilitating the Swamp Road Bridge over two tributaries of the Neshaminy Creek. “The culvert has had a weight restriction for many years and has not been able to accommodate the heavy truck traffic from nearby stone quarries, which forced drivers onto alternate routes through heavy residential areas,” explained KCI Project Manager Joseph J. (Jay) Roth III, PE. While residents in nearby developments called for the trucks to return to Swamp Road, Swamp Road residents sought improvements to the roadway before the trucks returned.

Reconciling Goals and Priorities—Seeking to open both the culvert and the bridge on the same schedule, PennDOT and the KCI project team faced several challenges. “We didn’t have enough time to secure the environmental clearances, permitting, and right-of-way acquisition necessary for a full bridge replacement or a combination rehabilitation and widening within PennDOT’s aggressive schedule,” explained Roth. “So we proposed a superstructure replacement design with a retaining wall along with roadway approach and safety enhancements.”

Roth expects KCI engineers to complete plans for the 33-foot bridge in June. The contractor responsible for the nearby culvert, designed by URS, is scheduled to build both projects, concurrently, over an eight-week period. The two-lane structure will retain its width of 24 feet—well within the existing 33-foot right-of-way—and traffic will be detoured around both sites during construction.

With the entrance to Bucks County Community College located just southeast of the bridge, construction on the $900 thousand project is scheduled for completion on Labor Day, to accommodate the start of the Fall semester. KCI then will begin work with PennDOT and the community on additional improvements throughout the corridor.

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