Closed Tunnel Could Some Day Link Malvern Borough to Great Valley

Back in December 2011, Dave Palmer, the engineer in charge of the Route 202 expansion, updated stakeholders on the project at a lunchtime meeting at Penn State Great Valley.

Toward the end of the meeting, Derrick Stokes, deputy director of the host Transportation Management Authority of Chester County, briefly ran down some other transit initiatives. Among them:

"We're hoping to obtain another grant to develop a link from the Malvern train station in Malvern Borough to Great Valley. If you're familiar with the intersection of Route 29 and Business Route 30, there's an old rail line right there, there's a tunnel underneath the rail line that's been filled in."

Turns out, Stokes was talking about a pedestrian path that would effectively connect Warren Avenue to Route 29. Could it really happen? Here's what a few people with knowledge of the project have to say about it. [Links added]

Derrick Stokes, Deputy Executive Director at TMACC, floated the idea of a grant at the December 2011 meeting:

If we're able to open that tunnel and provide direct access to the rail station, there's an opportunity to finally link the Malvern Train Station to Great Valley via either a pedestrian or bike path, or some type of limited-acess type road.

Molly Duffy, grant and program manager at TMACC, via email, gave a little background, but says no grants are currently in the works for the project:

It was a tunnel that cars used until maybe the 1940s. The roadbed leads to Malvern by way of the .

Opening this tunnel would make for a great ped/bike connection between Malvern and Great Valley. A link to the CVT [] and the Patriots Path.

East Whiteland Township manager Terry Woodman threw some cold water on the idea, via email, pointing out the prohibitive costs involved:

The idea of opening the tunnel for pedestrian traffic was talked about during the creation of the . But, before it can be opened, we would need to make the intersection of Rt.  30 and Rt. 29 safe for pedestrians to cross and there’s neither money in any budget to do the studies and engineering necessary to seek the approvals to do that nor money to construct the improvements that would be necessary to make it a safer crossing.

So, the tunnel project is a long way from being realized, if ever it is. Still, it's an interesting possibility.