By Russ Tarby
Contributing Writer
More than 100 people filled the town of Salina council chambers on July 12, 2016, to hear New York State Department of Transportation engineers describe safety-improvement plans for the Onondaga Lake Parkway, Route 370. Last week, some 18 months later, the DOT called a meeting and invited Liverpool Mayor Gary White, Liverpool Police Chief Don Morris, Town of Salina Supervisior Mark Nicotra and town engineer Douglas Wickman to hear how the project now stands.
White and Morris were dismayed by what they heard, so White convened a special meeting of the Village of Liverpool Board of Trustees for Feb. 1.
One DOT proposal calls for shutting off First Street and South Willow Street where they meet Route 370 at Heid’s Corner, White told trustees Matt Devendorf, Christina Fadden Fitch and Bradley Young.
“First Street is one of the most important parts of our village business district,” White said. “It’s troubling that part of this plan calls for shutting off those two streets.”
Several local developers have mixed-use projects in the works on the Basin Block, which could be affected by the DOT plan. The Basin Block is bordered by South Willow and First streets and Lake Drive.
White asked the DOT officials if they’d considered other options, but none were cited at the Jan. 30 meeting.
According to the DOT’s 2016 traffic-volume studies, more than 22,000 vehicles travel daily on the parkway and another 13,000 ride on the roughly parallel Old Liverpool Road. David Facchini, an associate vice president with H.W. Lochner Inc., a Chicago-based engineering firm with offices in Utica, said in 2016, “If we went to two lanes [on the parkway], traffic volume there would go down by 40 percent while the volume would increase significantly on Old Liverpool Road.”
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 and constructing a cement median down the center of the parkway.
“We’re all in favor of making the parkway safer,” White told the trustees on Feb. 1, “but I’m worried about the negative impact on our village.”
He instructed village engineer Greg Sgromo to meet with DOT engineers later this month.
“I don’t want to push the panic button yet,” the mayor said, “but we need to be aware of this process…it needs to be a cooperative effort.”
Interested citizens could contact Nick DeCirce, the DOT’s project manager for Region 3, at [email protected], or call (315) 428-4345.
If the state funds the planned safety improvements, work could begin in 2023, according to the DOT.
