There is a survey needing everyone's attention. This one requires a little more work than most surveys. You are being asked to state your preference for an alternate route to get through truck traffic out of the City of Hudson, and that involves reading and imagining or even going out and driving the routes if you're not familiar with the roadways involved.
MJ Engineering & Land Surveying, the consultants who are doing the truck study, looked at twelve possible routes and narrowed the options down to five. They are now asking for the input of residents on the five options. The descriptions of the five routes can be found at www.research.net/r/HudsonTruckStudy. A survey asking you to state your preferences comes at the end of the document.
On its Facebook page, the group Our Hudson Waterfront came out in favor of Option 12, and after careful consideration, Gossips does, too. Here's what Our Hudson Waterfront had to say:
Of the five options given, we greatly prefer #12, which avoids all residential areas, costs the least, and completely detours big trucks around the city. All the other options impact residential areas and in some cases cost a bundle. In our view Option 6 is a complete no-go, as it has the most residential impacts and will create dangerous crossing at Rte 9 involving a clash of through-trucks and gravel trucks.
If you need something to motivate you to do the work and complete the survey, try this. This past Wednesday, a truck that entered Hudson from the south on Third Street missed the signs indicating that trucks needed to turn right onto Columbia Street. Instead, the errant truck continued on to State Street, where it turned right, then made a right turn into Fifth Street, and finally got back onto Columbia Street. The incident was witnessed and documented by Bill Huston, who reported it to Gossips and provided these pictures.
Do your part to help get the trucks out of Hudson. Complete the survey: www.research.net/r/HudsonTruckStudy.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CAROLE OSTERINK
I'm hoping this truck survey is not the typical love/hate kind: for trucks or against trucks. Can't we admit for a moment that trucks have helped make America great, including helping make Hudson -- along with their ancestral kissing cousins whale killers, deep-water port polluters, and storm-water miscreants -- "upstate's downtown." I say this without reading the survey, only hopeful that our truckers--and Hudson industry -- can be protected.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but this makes no sense; nor does it make sense to comment on something you haven't read. This is not anti-trucks, or anti-trucker, or anti-industry, or anything of the kind. This is about intelligent routing of large trucks away from narrow, congested city streets onto highways specifically built to handle their weight and scale. It can't be pleasant to drive a huge trailer truck across 3rd and up Columbia Street, or across the top of the city, for all the time it supposedly saves. At worst, it's about adding 10 or 15 minutes to a run but making it far easier for truckers to navigate, much safer for people to walk the streets, and much gentler on our fragile urban infrastructure. Really, it's time to drop the phony outrage over change that is only common sense.
DeleteI think we should change our wording. We don't want "trucks out of Hudson" which implies ALL trucks big and small. We want "through trucks" that have no business here, just passing through, and are of a weight of 5 tons or more. When the change finally comes, it will be interesting to see how HPD enforces the new rules. How will they know a truck (not a semi, perhaps) is or is not passing through? How will they determine the weight of a truck (5 tons being the limit)? Plenty of trucks will still want to pass through Hudson, they just won't be the obviously unwelcome ones. B Huston
ReplyDeleteIncluded in the March 2021 Draft Truck Route Traffic Study by MJ Engineering and Land Surveying, P.C. is the following Truck Route History: “1999: A Truck Route Task Force, convened by the Columbia-Hudson Partnership, organized and collaborated an effort between the Hudson Development Corporation and the Columbia Economic Development Corporation. The task force was assembled to identify and implement alternate truck routes around the City of Hudson to reduce the impact on the citizens. The Truck Route Task Force conducted interviews with truckers that passed through the City of Hudson and determined that many would prefer not to drive through the City of Hudson due to the slow, stop/start nature of urban driving and the tight radius turns that they make while traveling through the City.”
ReplyDeleteGood Morning Peter and such a great point about not demonizing people who are truck drivers, or demonizing the honest work they do, which feeds THEIR families, pays their mortgages, puts braces on their kids' teeth and allows their families to enjoy a vacation.
ReplyDeleteSusan
Who is demonizing truckers? Or the honest work they do? Anywhere. In any part of any post? There is not one part in this discussion where that taking place. Not one.
DeleteThe main agenda is to get the long haul trucks out of Hudson. There is no reason to subject the drivers and city residents to noxious and dangerous traffic that is headed for points elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteRespectfully, this is not about demonizing truck drivers or trying to take away their livelihood. The recent Truck Study, which includes exploring alternate options to the current State Truck Route, clearly states that it is “directly related to the evaluation of through truck traffic in the City and does not intend to reroute existing local truck traffic that will have delivery destinations within the City of Hudson.” The Study includes information about the many ways that through trucks are harmful to our city and to our citizens. For example, “Beyond the damage caused by intense truck traffic upon pavement, curbing and various streetscape materials, the seismic loading (vibrations) from heavy vehicles accelerates the deterioration of water lines, sanitary sewer lines and storm sewer lines that lie beneath the City of Hudson’s busiest streets. The social and economic impacts of truck traffic upon the City’s business district and neighborhoods are especially worrisome. The community must contend with the particularly noxious influences of high truck volume such as noise, odors, dust, congestion, and visual degradation…. Diesel exhaust from truck traffic is a complex mixture of gases and fine particles. In an urban area such as Hudson, the narrow streets and tall buildings make it much harder for the gases and particles to dissipate in comparison to a rural setting with wider street and less buildings. When the exhaust cannot dissipate, it causes an unhealthy environment for pedestrians in the city.” The Study goes on. Would recommend reading it.
ReplyDeleteFollowing a 3-year study, in 2011 the City of Hudson, city residents, and Holcim, Inc. (formerly named St. Lawrence Cement) devised a plan to remove gravel truck traffic from city streets. The Zoning Code was changed to accommodate the proposed alternative route.
ReplyDeleteIn 2014, Holcim sold its city property to A. Colarusso and Son, Inc., which supposed it could ignore the hard-won agreement it had bought into, and to then substitute its own proposal of an expanded road in the South Bay.
But an expansion of the private road - which translates into industrial intensification at the shared waterfront - was something the 2011 study deliberately sought to avoid.
It’s instructive, then, that in 2015, when the Colarusso company was preparing the same road for its own proposal, the company stopped short of inadvertently completing the 2011 plan.
Rather than finish the 2011 alternative and to then submit its new proposal, the company continues to pretend there never was a 2011 plan to reroute gravel trucks. It continues to use the state truck route through the city in both directions, and streets west of 3rd street, and all under the pretense that the 3-year study and the consequent 2011 agreement never happened.
The company’s idea is to hold out for the expansion of its private road, which still needs the approval of the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals.
Make no mistake, though, that the gravel trucks are now using city streets to maximize a negotiating position. Anyone who pretends otherwise is a shill.
(A note to those politicians who pretend otherwise: you will be exposed as frauds.)
For those who don't understand the part the ZBA will play (among them several Planning Board members), here's an accurate overlay of the Colarusso proposal on the City Zoning Map:
ReplyDeletehttps://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DhmGTWm0L5w/XRpKILHoE6I/AAAAAAABR9E/IDapTgsECeEaqGq35YK44NiCC5gfLXdxwCLcBGAs/s1600/City%2BZoning%2BMap%2Bon%2BSite%2BPlan%2Bon%2BSatellite%2B%25281%2529.jpg
Turning onto Healy off of Fairview will be a treat, especially when McDonalds and Aldi create a new exit(s) and entrance(s) for their soon-to-be relocated buildings very close to that intersection. It's like that cargo ship that got stuck in the Suez -- our infrastructure just can't handle the growth in size of these trucks since our roads were built and designed for much smaller vehicles. There's only so much rearranging we can do. The problem is the trucks. Everything is getting too big and beyond the human scale. Hell, walking on Fairview is a dangerous and ugly task. And it will be even worse (for drivers, too) with trucks turning on Healy. Oh, BTW, when is Hudson going to refigure the intersection on Fairview at Green Street to make it somewhat pedestrian friendly? Isn't there a pot of money somewhere to do it from like two years ago? Or has that all been spent on lawyer's fees of late?
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