Return to News Index

A road runs through it
Plans to expand Route 41 have some residents up in arms. Others say the work is necessary.

They are dressed in cowboy hats, talking about the allure of a place where horses and cows graze on wide-open spaces.

Their dream: to save their little slice of bucolic heaven from a proposed expansion of Route 41.

Members of SAVE (Safety, Agriculture, Villages, Environment) are passionate about southern Chester County, a rural community fighting sprawl.

They plan to hold a Western-style fund-raiser Oct. 1 in a historic barn to have fun and keep the faith.

The shindig, which is open to the public, will feature barbecued sides of beef, a barn dance, and a saloon. Last year's event at Springdell Farm brought in $56,000. Since the group was formed in 1997, it has raised $700,000.

They are farmers, jewelry designers and scientists. They hired traffic experts and held workshops in local high schools, proposing the merits of a downsized plan with fewer traffic signals, fewer lanes, less asphalt.

"I like living in the country. I don't like traffic, and I love being surrounded by farms," said Sunny McGeorge, 54, an artist and equestrian.

Jack Weber, chairman of the Southern Chester County Organization on Transportation, an extension of the local chamber of commerce, said SAVE's proposals were "unrealistic," because Route 41 is the major corridor between Lancaster County and Wilmington.

"Sprawl is not created by highways. It is created by zoning and lack of local control over the construction of the area," said Weber, a former supervisor in Willistown Township who now lives in New London.

SAVE wants roundabouts, a newer take on the old traffic circle, which it claims are safer, but the transportation group says they slow traffic. The transportation group also supports bypasses around the villages of Chatham and Avondale, something SAVE rejects, saying bypasses would harm the character of the towns and surrounding farmland.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has been studying the highway for more than a decade, and an independent advisory committee is expected to come back next month with a plan on how to redesign the road, taking into account the local group's proposal to shrink the plan from a four-lane expressway to two lanes.

On a recent day, SAVE members wearing cowboy hats and boots were organizing the fund-raiser. They took turns stroking a gray horse named Merloch, which had poked its head out of a stall in the 19th-century barn at Springdell Farm.

Wayne DiFrancesco owns a 141-acre crop farm in London Grove Township. When he first saw the plan in 1998, he knew it would encroach on his White Horse Farm and "effectively put us out of farming."

SAVE began organizing, and Janet Mioduszewski, who left Philadelphia four years ago to get away from traffic, got involved. She designs jewelry and bought seven acres in this part of the world to "ride horses and live the country life."

It's not that the nonprofit group is against improving the highway, said Dee Durham, 44, its executive director. It's just that sometimes less is more and the future of a rural community hangs in the balance.

And, yes, it may be an uphill battle. "But that is not to say it is not the proper thing to do," Durham said.

But the members are dedicated and undeterred.

"What connects all those people is the land," said Louis Kaplan, a research scientist and chairman of the group board. "They live in a beautiful part of the world."

For Information

The SAVE Shindig at Springdell will start at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 1. To learn more about the event or the group, visit www.save41.org or call 610-925-0041.