BEACH LAKE, PA — A handmade sign proclaims it “Worst Road in U.S.”

“I think we should make it official by putting up a real sign saying the same thing,” said resident Jim Barth at the September 19 Berlin Township Board of Supervisors meeting.

Mention Peggy Runway Road and horror stories inevitably follow. Resident Craig Case said he wanted the fire department to close it. “It’s a safety hazard. Drivers swerve to avoid potholes that could swallow a Mack truck. On that narrow, winding road with no shoulders, they’re bound to hit anyone coming in the opposite direction.”

Connecting State Route 652 with Perkins Pond Road, Peggy Runway Road passes through two townships: Berlin and Damascus. However, neither can do much more than bemoan its longtime state of disrepair because, as a secondary state road, PennDOT owns responsibility for its maintenance. Thus far, complaints to that agency have fallen on deaf ears.

Berlin supervisors plan to plead their case at an upcoming Wayne County Association of Township Supervisors dinner that top PennDOT managers are expected to attend. They’re not optimistic about the result, but that could be because they know only too well the many pitfalls of PA road repair business.

In PA, state roads are built and repaired by PennDOT, the state’s own road oversight agency. Township roads are overseen by the township’s three supervisors, two of them roadmasters, who hire private contractors to rebuild, repair and maintain those roads. Those contractors submit competitive bids for each job, based on detailed specifications generated by engineering reviews. But township road maintenance isn’t trouble-free, either.

More than a year ago, Berlin awarded a bid to a contractor whose $8,500 bid was a fraction of the engineer’s $30,000 estimate for repair of Cosgrove Road. The only other bid came in at $31,000. Suspicious of the lower bid from its opening, roadmaster Cathy Hunt thought to double check it with the contractor before sending a contract. She was dissuaded by roadmaster Rob Mahon and supervisor Charlie Gries, who said the contractor wouldn’t sign a contract for a job it had so seriously underbid.

But the contractor did sign the contract, not discovering its bid error until the project was due to start. The contractor then balked at fulfilling the signed contract, so township solicitor Jeff Treat advised the board to call in the surety bond guaranteeing the contractor’s bid. Although the supervisors plan to take his advice, the project has already been delayed a year, increasing its ultimate cost and leaving Cosgrove Road in more dire need of repair.

As for Peggy Runway Road, Mahon says, “We’ll do our best with the PennDOT guys, but we’ll probably get nothing more out of the bargain than a good roast beef dinner.”