What gives? I call on PennDot's District 6 - which covers Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties - to find out what's going on. I wonder if we're going to face the bumbly rumble strips in the middle of ever-narrower roads.
District 6 spokesman Gene Blaum informs me via e-mail that Creek Road is not, in fact, PennDot's road, but we talk more about the strips' use and plans for the future.
PennDot policy: Shoulder rumble strips have been in use for years on expressways and highways, to keep drivers from drifting off the road out of boredom or inattention. Centerline rumble strips are a newer idea.
District 6 engineer Lou Belmonte says PennDot's statewide policy is to consider adding centerline rumble strips to all numbered routes as projects come up. And, he says, District 6 has added them to 364 miles of road, at an average cost of $2,500 to $3,000 per mile.
"It's in the range of line painting, almost," Belmonte says.
He points to the safety benefits of the strips: Since 2000, fatalities in head-on crashes have declined nearly 40 percent due, to some extent, to the installation of 3,700 miles of centerline rumble strips around the state.
The standard 14- to 18-inch-wide rumble strips are at least as wide as the centerlines themselves - 14 inches total, two 4-inch yellow lines and a 6-inch space in the between. And PennDot has limited its centerline strips to roads with lanes that, unlike Creek Road, are 10 feet wide.
Belmonte says Chester County has had the most strips added of the counties in District 6, a total of 151 miles of road there.
Garden State breakthrough: The rumble strip came into being in New Jersey.
The New Jersey Turnpike Authority confirms that shoulder rumble strips were first added to the Garden State Parkway from Red Bank to Asbury Park in 1952.
