Fed up with delays on PennDOT road work, biz owner denounces Guv

What would possess Ken Weinstein, a responsible business owner, to write to Gov. Rendell denouncing his "press propaganda" and "lack of respect" for community businesses?

PennDOT.

Germantown Avenue, in front of Weinstein's Trolley Car diner in Mount Airy, has been ripped up since January for a road reconstruction project that's weeks behind schedule.

Weinstein said he has lost a third of his business, has laid off 20 percent of his staff, and has seen his electricity and water service disappear at times.

And he said PennDOT can't meet its own deadlines or give business owners a straight story on how long the work will take.

"This was supposed to be finished in seven weeks," Weinstein said of the first phase of the project, which took out the road in front of his diner. "It's 15 weeks as of [yesterday], and we have no idea when the road will be open."

Diners can reach the restaurant only from the south, provided they know to drive past construction flagmen through the mess. But Weinstein said that the flag operators for weeks were stopping and questioning every driver, making it a forbidding journey.

"It looks like a war zone," Weinstein said.

PennDOT officials say that Weinstein's section was scheduled for 11 weeks, not seven, but they admit there have been delays. One difficulty was rebuilding the road over an old bridge that spans Cresheim Valley Creek.

"We're working with utilities [under the road] that are a hundred years old in some cases, and with a bridge built in the 1880s," said PennDOT construction engineer Paul Miocene. "It's hard to know what you're going to encounter sometimes until you get started."

A delay also arose when SEPTA asked PennDOT to relocate trolley tracks being relaid in the new road's surface.

PennDOT officials say that they hope to have the section they're now working on done by the end of May and that they're making some changes that they hope will allow them to move more quickly as the work proceeds south on Germantown Avenue.

"They just cover their tracks, make excuses and ignore the negative impact they're having," Weinstein said. "I'm not insinuating there's anything malicious here. It's operating procedure, and it's wrong."

Weinstein has written Rendell asking for state money to fund a marketing effort to help local businesses stay connected with their customers.

Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said he was unable to comment on the issue yesterday. *