PennDot has a $10M plan to improve Church Road intersections, but some Cheltenham residents say it will make life worse

The twists, turns, and backed-up traffic along Church Road in the Wyncote section of Cheltenham Township have made the state-owned thoroughfare something of a local legend.

Known for collisions, close calls, and the roar of heavy trucks, the narrow, pedestrian-unfriendly stretch between Rices Mill Road and Greenwood Avenue — a distance of just over one-third of a mile — is getting a $10 million makeover.

The federally funded project will add turning lanes at the Rices Mill and Greenwood intersections, as well as upgrade and synchronize the traffic signals at both while also improving drainage and adding a sidewalk along the road’s north side. Work began in August and is expected to conclude in 2026.

“The intersection improvements are specifically tailored to address existing traffic volumes and are not intended to encourage more traffic,” a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDot) said Tuesday.

But some Wyncote residents living on or close to Church Road said the improvements will inevitably draw more drivers. The dozens of trees cut down to make way for the project, including on the township-owned Curtis Arboretum property, already have altered parts of the landscape almost beyond recognition, they said.

“This is not what we signed up for,” said Bobbie Muse, whose longtime home backs up to Church Road. “We signed up for a quiet suburban life and now we’re sitting in the middle of a major highway.”

Nearby resident Linda Wright Moore assailed what she described as “destruction of the ambience and ecosystem in a totally residential area,” as well as the intersection modifications themselves.

The changes will render Church Road “even more hazardous, as well as increasing noise and pollution for those living nearby. Flooding further down Greenwood Avenue will be exacerbated by removal of old growth trees,” she said.

With the trees gone, Wright Moore said, parts of Church Road “look like a ‘stumperarium.’”

The three neighbors also questioned how removing trees and facilitating vehicular movements through intersections aligns with Cheltenham’s current Sustainability Plan.

The executive summary of the plan cites “mobility” as the third of its “community-wide goals and objectives.”

It calls for minimizing “vehicular travel and emissions,” increasing the use of “alternative modes of transportation,” and making it “desirable, safe, and convenient to walk and bike throughout the township.”

Also known as Route 73, Church Road is old enough to have been used by British troops during the Revolutionary War. More recently, it has become a focus of concern, particularly because of what residents said is a dramatic increase in truck traffic that seems driven largely by wayfinding apps.

“We’re not talking about little Amazon delivery trucks,” Emily Steinberg said. “We’re talking about tractor trailers. Big rigs.”

She and her neighbors also said it’s unfair for Church Road to be turned into a de facto access road to the Route 309 expressway.

Steinberg is active with a group called Citizens Voice of Cheltenham, and prepared a presentation featuring photos of enormous trucks navigating Church Road’s curves and narrows. She and others said they don’t understand why trucks above a certain weight or size can’t be banned from Church Road altogether.

“We’ve talked to the commissioners and the commissioners say, ‘it’s a state road, talk to PennDot,’” Steinberg said. “And we talk to PennDot, but they don’t listen.”

The PennDot spokesperson said that after discussions about truck traffic with the township, the state “conducted traffic safety studies and shared the results with the township. These studies did not justify banning truck traffic.”

The spokesperson also said that because the Church Road project will be constructed “to meet the latest safety requirements, there is no justification to impose restrictions on public travel.”

As for residents’ worries that a onetime country lane is becoming an expressway access road, the PennDot statement said only that the project “will help eliminate the back-ups but also enable more people to use the roadway to access 309, ensuring a long-term solution to traffic congestion.”

Township officials said the improvement project is the culmination of nearly 20 years of discussions with PennDot and 13 revisions, as well as a series of public presentations, town halls, and other opportunities for residents to ask questions. One such meeting, in April 2019, included 98 questions and answers.

“Throughout the upcoming construction stage, Cheltenham Township has an email set up [the address is churchrdpenndot@cheltenhampa.gov] to receive continued questions from the public’” spokesperson Lauren Walters said.

“Our staff will continue to communicate with PennDot and their project managers to get answers to any questions that arise,” Walters said, adding that updated information will be posted on the township website at: [Cheltenhampa.gov/churchrdpenndot].

Township officials also said the project “has presented significant challenges in balancing safe and efficient vehicular and pedestrian passage through the intersections, improving stormwater conditions, and minimizing the visual impact on the neighborhood to the greatest extent possible.”

Township Commissioner Mitchell Zygmund-Felt said what he described as a “vocal and local but small group of residents ... have been objecting to the traffic coming off of Route 309″ for several years.

“Their complaints are legitimate: oversized trucks; heavy volumes at multiple times; reckless and speeding drivers; all are real,” he said.

Despite cooperative state and township efforts, “there is little likelihood that a ‘satisfactory’ solution will be achieved,” said Zygmund-Felt.

“Sometimes, those in authority have to move on to avoid the Churchillian caution, ‘Perfection is the enemy of progress.’”

Lifelong Cheltenham resident Thomas McHugh, who has lived in the Wyncote section since 1986, said the project “will reduce the inconvenience and delay for the drivers (but) the perception of convenience always causes more traffic until the original level of inconvenience is met.

“The experts call it latent demand or induced demand,” McHugh said.

“Whatever they call it, the area will never be the same.”