Centre Region officials last night axed an ongoing project for a road that would allow drivers to bypass eastern State College to get to North Atherton Street.

The Centre Region Council of Governments (COG) voted 19-4 to terminate the estimated $40 million project and to have its transportation committee consider more affordable options.

State College Borough Council member Elizabeth Goreham said continuing the project would be risky because federal funding isn't assured.

"If we start it again tonight, we may be going down the same path to nowhere," said Goreham, who also sits on the region's transportation committee. "There are many projects that could be done if we scrap this project and do it another way."

Centre County Transportation Planner Tom Zilla presented an overview of the project, which would have connected the intersection of University Drive and Curtin Road to North Atherton Street at Vairo Boulevard.

He said the idea of the road, known as the Eastern Inner Loop, had been discussed in some form since the 1950s to alleviate traffic congestion on North Atherton Street and Park Avenue.

Six funding partners -- four local municipalities, including State College, and Penn State and Centre County -- agreed to pursue the most recent version of the idea in 1997, Zilla said.

However, he said COG suspended the project in 2001 because of lacking federal funds.

In August, the Centre County planning organization secured $400,000 in federal funds for the project. But Goreham said funding isn't guaranteed beyond that. Also, construction wouldn't begin until 2019, she said.

Ferguson Township Supervisor George Pytel, who voted against terminating the project, said spending money on alternatives would only continue to push the project back further.

"Either build it or stop studying it," he said. "The cost is constantly going up. It's just not going to happen."

Goreham said an alternative could be widening Waddle Road near the expressway. Another option is constructing a Fox Hollow Road interchange with the Mount Nittany Expressway for westbound traffic, COG and State College Borough Council President Tom Daubert said.

Zilla, however, said the Federal Highway Administration indicated that alternative would be unlikely because of safety concerns with partial interchanges.

Harris Township Supervisor Nigel Wilson said he wasn't impressed by any of the proposed alternatives. He said the most recent plan for the inner loop was the only logical solution.

"Anything else just isn't gonna cut it, so why should we waste our time studying other alternatives?" Wilson asked.

Several COG members said they were confused whether the wording of the motion meant axing just the particular study or the location of University Drive and Vairo Boulevard entirely.

Don Hahn, a newly elected council member who will begin his term in January, said after the discussion that he also didn't understand exactly what had been passed.

"It doesn't necessarily rule out a different version of the same alignment," he said.