Residents cite unsafe tanker traffic issues

Tanker traffic safety along Blue Mountain Drive and Route 309 in West Penn Township remains of grave concern to one couple.

Residents Allison and Phil McArdle voiced their uneasiness with the situation at Monday morning’s board of supervisors meeting.

Phillip McArdle said it’s uncomfortable to watch the tanker attempts to pull out onto 309 from Blue Mountain Drive.

McArdle noted that it’s already a bad intersection, and that while there aren’t deaths or crashes that occur on a daily basis, it can be dicey.

“It’s a circus act with the tanker trucks,” McArdle said. “What’s going to happen when somebody gets killed?”

McArdle said tanker trucks have damaged guide rails along the intersection in several instances.

“It’s just a deathtrap waiting to happen,” he said.

Board Chairman Tony Prudenti told McArdle he agreed with him.

“The baton has been passed so many times,” Allison McArdle said.

Prudenti said supervisors have attempted to deal with the situation.

“It is very frustrating for us also,” Prudenti said. “I wish I had the answer.”

Last month, Allison McArdle told supervisors she could see a difference in tanker trucks’ speed along Blue Mountain Drive.

She said she spoke to Bryan Miller, president of Bryan Miller Trucking Inc. of Andreas, and that they’ve since been respectful.

James Land Jr., president and owner of Ringgold Acquisition Group II LLC, told supervisors at that meeting he was barraged by drivers after a resident said in April that tanker trucks were driving too fast.

Allison McArdle said at the meeting that drivers were driving at excessive speeds between Route 309 and Fort Franklin Road, especially during the evening hours.

Land asked township police Chief Brian Johnson how many drivers have since been cited for speeding in that area. Johnson said none.

McArdle told Land at that time she had numerous videos that she could show him.

She said it wasn’t all of the drivers, “just a few bad apples.”

Prudenti instructed township secretary Katie Orlick at that time to write letters to the trucking companies and said the township would try to have more of a police presence in that vicinity at night.

Prudenti wants to negotiate a water extraction and road agreement with Land, and suggested that at Land’s expense, he run a pipeline out onto a state road.