The results of the City's online truck route survey were published on the City of Hudson website today, and the findings, which can be viewed here, are pretty predictable.
Sixty-seven percent of the people responding were between the ages of 45 and 74.
Almost eighty percent of the respondents live in Hudson.
Eighty-seven percent of those responding think trucks impact the city in a negative way.
The truck routes through Hudson are an obvious problem, and the solution is obvious, too: have trucks that have no business in the city use Routes 23 and 9H to bypass Hudson. The real problem is making that happen.
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| Photo: Bill Huston |
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The Colarusso company can help us by finally making the 2011 alternative route for gravel trucks a reality.
ReplyDeleteI refer to the Great Compromise of 2011, worked out with the previous property owner (who still owns land in Hudson, incidentally, and pays no taxes! So why doesn’t someone write about that?!)
But the Colarusso company never had any intention of finishing the alternative route - a road straight from the mine to the river. Of course they continued working on the road, and even widened it east of Rte. 9G without explanation and in violation of the Zoning Code (by widened it into the Recreational Conservation District).
https://gossipsofrivertown.blogspot.com/2016/07/happening-tonight-at-city-hall.html
But the company didn’t invest in all that land just to realize someone else’s compromise. The shareholders must be thinking of its resale value.
So instead, to achieve the company’s long-term plan, a double-lane road through South Bay, our neighborhoods are held hostage with gratuitous truck traffic until the social pressures become too much to bear.
As long as the 2011 alternative through South Bay we agreed on remains undeveloped, the city is supposed to cave in the end and accept the new landowner’s new proposal.
To complete this cynical picture, throw in a politician or two like County Supervisor Mussman who is ever at the ready to advance the company’s plans even if that means creating divisions along class and race lines (i.e. if you don’t give the company everything it wants then you’re privileged and uncompromising).
Sorry Ms. Mussman, but we compromised already on an alternative worked out between 2008 and 2011. Our zoning was even amended to accommodate that particular plan – a single lane road to be used in two directions of travel, “for ingress and egress” - and a mixed use waterfront.
If the Colarusso company didn’t like our compromise, then it shouldn’t have bought into it in the first place. Caveat emptor.
Now the Colarusso lawyer is telling us that the court judgement in the company's failed lawsuit against the city didn't mean what the court clearly said it meant.
What a torrent of aggressive nonsense. How about just finishing the road we've all already agreed upon?
I think it has been pointed out many times that it's not just Colarusso. They are only a fraction of the trucks coming into the city.
DeleteYes, a very important point. This was from a Creighton Manning study last year:
Delete"At the Columbia Street/Third
Street intersection, 7,774 vehicles were observed over 12 hours, with 419 truck trips (5%). The gravel
trucks represent 184 trips (44%) of trucks observed" (p. 3).
https://cms3.revize.com/revize/hudsonny/115337_Colarusso%20Traffic%20Rpt%20update_2020-10-30.pdf
Still, gravel traffic probably represented 100% of the semi-trucks that were off the truck route and still in Hudson.
I, for one, don't expect the truck route to change in my lifetime. If the State DOT and County DPW and Colarusso really gave a hoot about the well being of Hudson's infrastructure and its residents' lungs, ears, eyes, anxiety, stress, general health and sanity, the route would have been rerouted long ago. They shouldn't require any prodding, nor a useless $100,000 dollar study funded with taxes. Obviously the state and county would rather it remain as is and hope, once again, that interest in the issue from Hudson just fades away. We have become inured to this scourge. It's time to literally take to the street, stand in front of a truck or two on Columbia, get arrested and DEMAND action. Then repeat. Unfortunately, the people of Hudson nowadays seem to prefer to talk and "study" rather than act. B Huston
ReplyDeleteSo do it. Take a stand and get arrested for the cause you believe in. But just like you don't expect to see the truck route change in your lifetime, I don't think I will see you take any action in my lifetime other than complaining.
DeleteI took the picture above, what have you done, MS? Will you join me in standing in front of a truck?
DeleteIt's a nice picture, although we don't need a picture to demonstrate what we already know. I run a business that has volunteered time and resources to the Youth Department on multiple occasions, as well as making financial contributions. And no, I will not get arrested with you and never suggested I would. Thanks
DeleteOnly trucks making local deliveries should use city streets. Colarusso's trucks do not need to used city streets if they can use a route through the wetlands area (and I guess that is a HUGE problem). Those just passing through should be routed on 9H. It is so simple!
ReplyDeleteNo Signe Adam, redirecting trucks through the wetlands is NOT a problem at all!
DeleteInstead, it was the very solution to the gravel truck problem worked out by all parties in 2011.
Referring to my first comment above, your incorrect guess is a perfect example of the widespread and shallow comprehension of this issue which causes unending mischief and huge smiles among industry shills.
We don't have to share the same goal, but you do have to get your facts right. Your guess is dead wrong.
....meaning routing the trucks thru the wetlands is not a problem at all ?
Delete....meaning that routing the trucks thru the wetlands is not a problem at all? Or only a political "problem" in your opinion?
DeleteThat’s correct. Routing the gravel trucks through the wetlands is not a problem.
DeleteHere’s why.
In 2011, with the City’s other options pretty much exhausted, a healthy variety of local interests, all represented by the Common Council, reached a compromise with the landowner and its lessee which pretty much left all parties dissatisfied.
That’s not to imply a weakness in the deal, in fact it was quite the opposite. After years of debate, our grumbling had produced a stable solution, one which the City soon adopted into Local Law.
In 2012, the NYS DOS designated the South Bay a Significant Coastal Fish and Wildlife Habitat which ideally brings an additional level of scrutiny to any proposed actions there. At the time anyway, that seemed a real bonus for those who wanted maximum protection for the wetlands.
So today, after all the work forging that compromise, we can still grumble that we use materials, live in houses, drive on roads requiring natural resources, but nobody who took a part in that phase of the waterfront planning can say in good conscience that very much was left unexplored (maybe clearer language in the statutes, but that’s a slightly different issue).
When it was apparent that the funds were just not available for the City to seize the lands through eminent domain, there was nothing left to do but to accept a compromise.
Now are you suggesting all these years later that something terribly profound was overlooked? Do you know something I don’t? Or did you just arrive in Hudson and begin supposing about the wetlands 10 minutes ago? Or maybe you’re just doing Ms. Mussman’s bidding by circulating the lie that it’s our unreconciled concerns for the wetlands which are actually harming Hudson’s underprivileged neighborhoods? That’s just a cynical lie.
But you know who has a big problem with the Great Compromise of 2011? It’s A. Colarusso and Son, Inc. The company rejects the Great Compromise they bought into supposing that nobody would remember their exertions of a decade ago.
That means it’s the company that has a problem with the wetlands.
It’s a complicated story, but you must be getting it by now.
Perhaps you can now appreciate why your glib “guess” infuriated me. Join the party by all means – the more the merrier - but don’t be used by Supervisor Mussman’s ugly narrative which makes the wetlands a villain. That’s not the story at all – not even close to it.
Again, the wetlands are not a problem, not if we hold to the 2011 compromise. But that means defending the existing road through the wetlands. That is the solution, and therefore NOT A PROBLEM.
The recent Creighton-Manning study of Colarusso's truck traffic has revealed the truth-- the company is seeking up to a 473% increase in volume of trucks. The rationale for their new haul road has always been framed as an environmental justice initiative aimed at providing relief to the minority residents along the Columbia St. route. It's now clear that was a scam from the beginning-- vastly greater levels of gravel production and truck traffic was the goal all along. And worse, Colarusso insists that the City of Hudson lacks the legal ability to put any upside limit on the number of trucks, so we could be looking at an unlimited increase in truck numbers, with devastating consequences for our highways, South Bay, and the waterfront.
ReplyDeleteYup, and that's exactly why the existing single-lane road, to be used "for ingress and egress" in the language of the CR Zoning District (i.e., for two-way traffic) was the City's solution to maintaining a mixed-use waterfront.
DeleteBy directly regulating truck numbers to promote a mixed use waterfront, the City risks interfering with the rights of a private enterprise.
But by limiting how trucks get to the waterfront, which is a more responsible solution and fully within the City's rights, the grandfathered narrow road sets its own natural limit on how many trucks can drive on it in a single day.
Tht was always the plan, as discussed by the Common Council in 2011.
The new owner (in 2014) either wasn't paying attention or believed it could wear down the resolve of residents. I say again, caveat emptor.
STICK TO THE 2011 PLAN.