http://www.poconorecord.com/report/tocks/9.htm




Route 209: State highway to park road


By DAVID PIERCE


Pocono Record Writer


dpierce@... The story of the Delaware Water Gap National
Recreation Area also is the tale of how a 21-mile stretch of two-lane
highway was banned to commercial traffic.


Today the Route 209 leg that traverses the Pennsylvania side of the
park between Bushkill and Milford is a scenic 35 mph drive, a pace
designed so visitors can enjoy the trees, vegetation, rocky cliffs and
farm fields along the way. The slower speed and absence of large
tractor trailers make it easier to observe road signs pointing to
major park attractions, from boat launch, picnicking and swimming
sites along the Delaware River, to interior walking trails leading to
majestic waterfalls.


But the task of converting part of a state highway to a national park
road wasn't easy, and there are several local exemptions to the
commercial vehicle ban unique in the National Park Service system.


In the late 1970s, the winding road was a major connector route for
tractor trailers from Interstate 80 to Interstate 84 and other
interstates leading to New England. There was considerable resistance
from trucking interests and state officials to any kind of truck ban,
unless an alternative road was built.


"You can't ban trucks on 209 and put them on other roads like Route
402," said George Pulakos, then a senior state Transportation
Department official, in a 1979 interview. "It's just not possible to
do so."


Opposition also came from New Jersey elected officials, who feared the
estimated 3,500 trucks that used Route 209 each day to reach I-84,
would begin to jam Route 94 in Warren and Sussex counties. Pike County
officials, wary of constant 84-209 traffic jams in Milford, lobbied
for the truck ban.


In October 1980, Gov. Dick Thornburgh signed a legislative bill
transferring Route 209 to the NPS. The Thornburgh administration
attached conditions, however, requiring federal development of an
alternative route.


Area state legislators, angry about the Thornburgh conditions added to
the transfer bill after its legislative approval, introduced new
transfer legislation in early 1981. But by May, the governor's office
dropped the demand for an alternative route and agreed to the
transfer. A PennDOT spokesman said recent accidents along 209 factored
into the administration's decision to approve the transfer without
assurances an alternative road would be built.


Federal acceptance of the road was delayed first by an NPS
environmental impact study, then by threatened federal budget cuts of
road maintenance funds, before President Ronald Reagan signed a
funding bill in December 1981 that completed the transfer.


As the NPS inched towards implementing the truck ban in 1983, a
trucking association threatened legal action to block the move. Some
feared that 800 jobs at the Roadway Express terminal in Tannersville
would be lost if their vehicles could no longer use 209.


U.S. Rep. Joseph McDade of Scranton introduced a bill, approved in
1983, banning all commercial vehicles except those making local
deliveries or those whose companies are based locally. In 1984,
provisions were added to allow a limited number of trucks from Orange
County, N.Y. to use Route 209 each day on a first-come, first-served
basis.


TODAY ROUTE 209 commercial traffic in the park is governed by a series
of complicated, limited exemptions for locally-based commerce, says
Joel Schwartz, the park's fee toll collection manager. All other
commercial use vehicles — small repair trucks and cars used by
salespeople as well as tractor-trailers — are banned from the 21-mile
stretch of Route 209.


"This is the only Park Service facility in the entire system that has
an exception to it," Schwartz says of a nationwide NPS ban on
commercial vehicles. Unless Congress passes new legislation, those
exemptions will expire in 2005.


Businesses in Monroe, Pike and Northampton counties established before
July 1973 are allowed 209 access. But businesses in these counties
established after that date aren't permitted to receive deliveries via
209 from any locations outside the region, such as New England for
instance.


Yet commercial vehicles from any location may use park roads to
service any customers north of the park in Ulster, Sullivan, Rockland
and Orange counties, N.Y.


Commercial vehicles of any kind are allowed to use park roads if
traveling on business to Pennsylvania communities "contiguous" to the
park boundaries. The municipalities of Stroudsburg, Upper Mount Bethel
and Portland are among those defined in the contiguous category.


Yet another regulation can override all the previous regulations on a
heavy traffic day. No more than 125 northbound or 125 southbound
commercial vehicles per day are allowed to travel in the park.


All commercial vehicles are stopped at booths as they enter the park
and charged a toll, based on vehicle size, of $1 to $7. Tour buses
also are charged a fee.


Park rangers have full legal powers to cite drivers for moving
violations and use radar to clock speed.


(Originally Published on August 14, 2001)