More than 100 people filled the town of Salina council chambers to hear state Department of Transportation engineers describe safety-improvement plans for Onondaga Lake Parkway (Route 370) on Thursday, July 12.
The proposal-in-progress aims to lessen three types of accidents on Route 370: cross-over collisions, run-off-the-road crashes and collisions with the 10’9” CSX Railroad bridge.
To prevent traffic accidents, the DOT is considering reducing the number of lanes from two lanes in each direction to a single lane in each direction. To prevent over-height vehicles from crashing into the bridge, engineers recommended installing a permanent over-height vehicle detection system.
From 1987 to 2010, there were 87 bridge hits. From January to November 2010, six more bridge hits occurred. A Megabus struck the bridge in September 2010, killing four and injuring 24. From 2012 to 2014 there were three bridge hits, one more last year and one so far this year.
David Fracchini, an associate vice president with H.W. Lochner Inc., a Chicago-based engineering firm with offices in Utica, said that hundreds of over-height vehicles have been turned away by a detection system operating since 2012. The DOT’s slideshow presentation showed 336 detections in 2012, 354 in 2013, 399 in 2014 and 420 last year.
“The numbers keep going up,” Fracchini said. When the detection system successfully warns an approaching vehicle of the low bridge, the driver must then turn around, “which is in itself a hazard,” he added.
The preponderance of cross-over and head-on collisions also occurred in the vicinity of the bridge, Fracchini said, showing images of clustered accident sites.
Traffic volume studies show more than 22,000 vehicles traveling daily on the parkway, he said, and another 13,000 on the roughly parallel Old Liverpool Road.
“If we went to two lanes [on the parkway], traffic volume there would go down by 40 percent,” Fracchini predicted, “while the volume would increase significantly on Old Liverpool Road.”
The engineer suggested that the new traffic volume levels could be controlled by better traffic lights on Old Liverpool Road and the possible construction of traffic roundabouts at Heid’s Corner and/or the corner of Electronics Parkway and Old Liverpool Road.
The project’s objective is to correct safety deficiencies using cost-effective accident-reduction methods to reduce all accidents by 25 percent.
At the July 12 meeting, DOT representatives, including Ed Rodriguez, Nick DeCirce and Gene Cilento, spoke one-on-one with attendees, but no questions were taken in public. The DOT continues to seek citizen input. Contact Nick DeCirce, project manager for Region 3, at [email protected], or call 428-4345 by July 26.
Several local elected officials attended, including Fourth District County Legislator Judy Tassone, Liverpool Mayor Gary White, Salina Town Supervisor Mark Nicotra, First Ward Salina Town Councilor Colleen Gunnip and newly elected Liverpool Village Trustee Bradley Young.
If the state funds the planned improvements, work could begin during the 2018 and 2019 construction seasons.
