Upcoming road work in Sinking Spring is designed to make walkers, cyclists safer

by Steve Reinbrecht

Crews will improve parts of Penn Avenue in Sinking Spring to make it safer and easier to walk or ride a bike along the borough’s main road.

Work is likely to start in March, borough manager Mike Hart said Friday.

The biggest chunk of the project is laying a 1,100-foot sidewalk along Penn Avenue, between Wynnewood and Park avenues, where the road abuts a cliff full of rocks and exposed roots.

Across the street, workers will install a sidewalk around the stone toll-house there, where the walk abruptly narrows at the landmark.

Up the hill, a crew will bump out the sidewalk into the street at the northwest corner of Hull Street, which will especially benefit people going to St. John's Reformed Church.

The peninsula, like those at West Reading intersections, is designed to give pedestrians a vantage and a shorter distance to cross.

The borough wanted to put them at all four corners, but there were drainage problems, Hart said.

Finally, the road will get new stripes and signs.

The borough got grants for the $354,000 project.

It awarded the contract to Reamstown Excavating Inc.