Mirror photo by Gary M. Baranec / Illustration by Nick Anna Traffic crosses over the Seventh Street Bridge heading toward UPMC Altoona. PennDOT plans to spend about $1 million to create better lane configurations for the area.

PennDOT plans to spend about $1 million to create a better lane configuration for traffic heading north on Sixth Avenue, then over the Seventh Street Bridge toward UPMC Altoona.

Although there is “plenty of capacity,” the current lane configuration is problematic for a couple of reasons, according to PennDOT District 9 Engineer Jessica Urbas, who spoke at a meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, a group comprising PennDOT and county and municipal officials, whose role is to plan transportation projects for the Blair County area.

One problem is that so many motorists get into the left lane of one-way, two-lane Sixth Avenue to turn left over the bridge that their vehicles often stack up back to the preceding intersection at Eighth Street.

The other problem is that after most of those motorists make the left turn onto one-way, two-lane Seventh Street, they get into the right lane, which causes their vehicles to stack up behind the next traffic light for the full length of the short block before the bridge begins.

Those motorists get into the right lane of Seventh Street so they can turn right after the bridge onto the double-lane ramp to Chestnut Avenue, which heads to Juniata.

On the bridge, that right lane is often crowded enough — it includes cars heading straight toward the hospital — that motorists in the left lane can’t get over to the Chestnut ramp, according to Vince Greenland, assistant district executive for design.

PennDOT proposes to create a new configuration that will allow motorists to use two lanes throughout the double turning movement from Sixth Avenue to Seventh Avenue and across the bridge, then onto to Chestnut Avenue.

It will do so by creating a 75-foot third lane on Sixth Avenue exclusively for left turns and by restriping the lanes on the far side of the bridge so both equally funnel traffic onto the two-lane ramp to Chestnut — with just the single lane to the left continuing to the hospital.

The right lane past the off-ramp to Chestnut will be obliterated by striping.

The key to making it work will be that motorists in the left lane on the Seventh Street Bridge will not need to move to another lane in order to access the Chestnut Avenue ramp.

The project is similar in intent to one executed a couple years ago to eliminate stacking on Pleasant Valley Boulevard by vehicles turning left onto 17th Street whose drivers planned to then turn right to head south on I-99. They wouldn’t use the left lane so they could avoid having to change lanes and break into a line of traffic quickly after the turn to access the interstate on-ramp.

The Sixth Avenue-Seventh Street project will include signage adjustments and coordination of traffic signals, Urbas said.

PennDOT initially planned to extend the left turn lane on Sixth Avenue all the way to Eighth Street but shortened it to avoid interfering with the operation of the new Greenbean Coffee House, Greenland indicated.

The project grew out of a study of city traffic that previously generated a now-completed project on 17th Street.

That study included an examination of the Sixth and Seventh avenues corridor.

The Sixth Avenue-Seventh Street project is slated for construction in 2022.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.