The Recommendation About the Trucks

Last night, at the informal Common Council meeting, members of the ad hoc Truck Route Committee presented their final report and recommendation. The recommendation: to prohibit trucks not making local deliveries from traveling through the city on Third Street and Columbia Street.

Last year, extensive investigation by Councilmember Margaret Morris (First Ward) and Jason Foster, who was then Commissioner of Public Works, discovered there was no legal obligation for Hudson to allow trucks to travel on Route 9G any farther than the turnoff to the building now known as The Warehouse. Back in the 1980s, the stretch of Route 9G, from Route 23 to that point, was designated a federal access highway for the benefit of L&B Furniture, which was located in that building. (L&B Furniture ceased to exist around 2008.) It was never intended that truck access extend beyond that point, but for the past forty or more years Hudson has unnecessarily put up with trucks passing through Hudson on Third and Columbia streets, negatively impacting the health, safety, and quality of life for Hudson residents and visitors.

Hudson cannot prohibit truck traffic from passing through the city altogether. The city must provide a route for trucks to pass through the city. The truck route that enters Hudson on Worth Avenue and goes along the east side of the Public Square is a federal access highway and needs to remain. 

The findings of a study by Transtec Group, which evaluated the streets involved in both truck routes, support eliminating the 9G route. Transtec found that Third and Columbia streets showed significant areas of distress at the surface and sublayers and should receive full replacement, including the sublayer, to last for twenty years. This would require extensive closure and would be logistically difficult if not impossible. The alternative is repaving every five years, at an estimated cost of $800,000 each time. Transtec found the Worth Avenue route to have a stiffer and more sound pavement structure, which will require maintenance repaving every ten years, at an estimated cost of $800,000 each time or $1.6 million over twenty years. Maintaining the Route 9G truck route through Hudson would cost the City more than twice as much as maintaining the Route 9 truck route over the course of twenty years. Smoother streets, together with lowering the speed limit, which has already happened, will reduce the negative impact of truck traffic.

Councilmember Mohammed Rony (Second Ward), who served on the Truck Route Committee, said of the recommendation to prohibit through trucks from using Third and Columbia streets, "Part of our strategy is to make going through the city a nuisance." He spoke of the legally required route through the city being the most annoying one, encouraging trucks to bypass the city altogether.

The Truck Route Committee's report can be found here. The presentation by the Truck Route Committee and subsequent discussion can be viewed here, beginning at 1:55:06.

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