The South Valley Parkway is complete...ish

It's well ahead of schedule, even though it feels like it took forever to bring to this point, but as of Friday, August 31, 2018, the South Valley Parkway in Hanover Township and Nanticoke is finally complete. Mostly. Sort of.

It's an odd road, built for...reasons. The most immediate and explicit is to serve as a bypass for Middle Road, the ancient two-lane road that was the original highway from Wilkes-Barre to Nanticoke and beyond. The longstanding problem with this road is that it channels increasingly fast and heavy traffic through numerous residential areas between Wilkes Barre and Luzerne County Community College. The South Valley Parkway, in theory, will allow this traffic to bypass Middle Road onto a two-lane parkway with numerous turning circles and no residences.

There are other reasons, of course. A project of this magnitude wouldn't have been undertaken just to reduce traffic past a few dozen houses. Many of those reasons are explained in this environmental assessment from January 2013.

I've ridden almost the whole thing. It is convenient in some ways, and the turning circles are a smooth, safe, and efficient means of operating an intersection without anyone necessarily having to come to a complete stop. In other ways it feels like a long cut to nowhere. In appearance it seems oddly asymmetrical and aesthetically wrong, with stretches that seem to narrow and widen without reason and odd sections along Middle Road now isolated, in a "you can't get there from here" sense.

An example: Lower Askam, the western border of Hanover Township with Nanticoke, is now effectively cut off from Nanticoke. Middle Road heading west towards Nanticoke now abruptly terminates in a right-curved exit that takes you onto the South Valley Parkway headed east. The only way to continue into Nanticoke would be to follow the Parkway east to the first turning circle, turn around 180 degrees, and head back along the parkway towards Nanticoke - about a two mile detour. That, or make a left-hand turn off the right-curving exit, a maneuver that is probably prohibited, tough no sign indicates this yet. In the east, Middle Road is interrupted by the removal of a bridge; drivers heading east must exit,take a bridge onto a turning circle, and then exit again across a bridge and back onto Middle Road.

The parkway is not officially finished yet. There is still one more roundabout to go, at the intersection of Middle Road and Prospect Street. I get the impression there may be some adjustments made to the newly-built parkway. And soon, if things go as planned, new industry - primarily warehouses and distribution centers - will move into the areas opened up by this construction. Will the South Valley Parkway be up to the task? Time will tell.