GREENPORT: NO DEADLY INTERSECTIONS WELCOME
Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
05-05-10 - 9:05 a.m. - A disagreement between the NYS Department of Transportation and Town of Greenport over the need for traffic lights at a pair of proposed intersections harkens back to decades of battles waged by municipalities to get traffic signals at accident-prone intersections.
Caught in the middle of the dust-up between the DOT and Greenport Planning Board is the proposed O&G truck route from the Holcim quarry in Greenport to the deep-water dock in Hudson. The route would cross Routes 9 and 9G—crossings that planning board members have called "dangerous" and "accidents waiting to happen." The proposed intersection of Route 9G, however, is not in Greenport but in the City of Hudson.
“Traffic lights at the intersections are an absolute necessity. [The intersections] are a fatality waiting to happen," asserted Michael Bucholsky, a member of the Greenport Planning Board.
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Route 9 at the approximate location of the proposed intersection |
DOT officials don’t agree and rejected a request from the Connecticut-based O&G to place traffic signals at the intersections as a condition of Town Planning Board approval. “DOT said no to the request. Not one signal ‘warrant’ has been met to warrant traffic signals or lights at either location,” said Planning Board secretary Beth MacGiffert.
Patrick Prendergast, an engineer working for O&G, told ccSCOOP that DOT is adamant in its opposition to the signals.
“With DOT, everything is mathematics. You can’t go to them and say we want to put in a traffic light without them saying show me the warrants [factors that warrant the placement of a signal],” Prendergast said. “The thing is DOT isn’t even asking for the numbers now. They know them. They are saying forget about it.”
Planning Board members stated that the other intersections in the town—the Middle Road intersection with Route 23 and the Routes 9G and 23 intersections just west of Columbia-Greene Community College—have long been considered "death traps" for motorists, and they do not want to add yet another intersection to the list of those that claim lives. They also maintain that DOT has been wrong in the past and changed its mind, noting the numerous deaths that occurred at the intersection of Fish and Game Road and Route 9H in Claverack before the state finally permitted a traffic signal to be installed there.
“We don’t want deaths to occur before the state changes its mind this time,” said one Greenport planning official.
Bucholsky added that he believes it’s the duty of the board to consider the safety of the public.
Specifically, Planning Board members have stated that they believe the sight distances at the proposed intersections would not prove to be adequate; motorists exceed the speed limit at the proposed intersections making the likelihood of accidents even greater; the trucks would need time to regain speed after stopping at the intersections, making it even more likely that accidents would occur. At their April meeting, the Planning Board directed O&G to go back and examine further the proposed intersections and traffic at the intersections.
Prendergast noted it’s not the first time he has dealt with these concerns in Greenport. “Seventeen years ago, when I was first starting my firm, I did the site plan for Kaz, and some of those same planning board members were there raising the same concerns about the Kaz entrance,” he said. Nonetheless, Prendergast said he has contacted Creighton Manning, an Albany traffic engineering firm, to reexamine the proposed intersections.
A representative of Creighton Manning, Ken Wersted, appeared before the Planning Board in February and reported that the sight distances north and south of the proposed intersection on both highways exceeded state recommendations in two instances and fell just below what is recommended in the other instances. Where the sight distances were less than what is recommended, Wersted said that vegetation and trees could be removed from Holcim property to correct the problems.
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