Traffic Nightmare Scheduled

Many residents who don’t travel on Payne Street in the north Elmsford part of Town may be unaware of the impact that halfway-point roadway may soon have on the Town. Traveling east and west through the Town has limited thoroughfares available to you. There is also a limited amount of “cut through” side streets that can be used but still empty to them. It exemplifies a lack of planning from Town leaders back when the Town was slowly beginning its growth and up until now. But what is it that Payne Street residents need to know about? Well simply, it will be affected because of the Sprain Brook Parkway.

When the Sprain Brook Parkway was built, an overpass was created at Payne Street, as well as other areas. What many people don’t know is that the Sprain Brook Parkway runs parallel to the Catskill aqueduct for a limited distance. Additionally, there is a tremendous amount of daily traffic that crosses that overpass mostly during the day that adds to the amount of emergency services responses for every community that the roadway passes through. In fact, monitoring a scanner of area police and fire departments between Yonkers to Hawthorne promises at least one emergency call, if not more, per day on that roadway. More importantly, when there is an accident and traffic halts, the exits and area roadways quickly fill up with additional traffic as motorists seeks alternate routes to escape the parking lot syndrome.

Several months ago a piece of the Sprain Brook Parkway roadway fell, collapsing over the Payne Street overpass that has been there since the late 1970s. No one was injured. Emergency repairs were quickly performed and the traveling public was not inconvenienced too much. Below the overpass however is a somewhat different story. Shoring was installed as a temporary fix which you can see as you drive under the affected area on Payne Street.

At the March 8^th Town Board meeting (https://youtu.be/1udMPWGHs7s), a permanent repairs plan to this now-temporarily repaired bridge was unveiled by two representatives from the New York State Department of Transportation out of Poughkeepsie, NY. Most of the presentation was made by Paul Tirums whose title is Regional Structures Engineer. His presentation included discussing what happened, what the current temporary fix was and what they plan to do this spring/summer to permanently repair the bridge. They had prepared and showed how Payne Street and those residents would be minimally affected during the repairs. Many questions were raised by residents, but mostly about traffic, traffic delays and accessibility during construction.

Residents continued to question not only how traffic would impact their quality of life with the three month disruption, but where would school, camp and private buses turn around, do pickups and drop offs safely and effect their lifestyles? While the engineers who spoke gave their answers, many in the audience were not satisfied. As always, Mr Feiner side-stepped away from his responsibility and asked the Payne Street Civic Association if they would be the conduit between the neighborhood and the construction company doing the work. Our belief is that is exactly the job of the Town administration, specifically Mr Feiner and his Board. While we appreciate the relationship between a community and their respective civic associations, it’s the responsibility of government to look out for and help its constituents. Mr Feiner should be in contact with the residents as well as the civic association. It is the perfect scenario for him to campaign through email blasts and snail-mailings under the guise of keeping the neighborhood informed. We also believe the civic association will receive more accurate information from the residents due to a level of trust that doesn’t exist with this administration.

The main complaint about traffic still needs to be addressed. What wasn’t thoroughly discussed was the impact to the surrounding area once the construction starts. The residents are concerned, and rightly so, about the impact on themselves. But, once traffic on Payne Street is stopped during construction, it will back up even more on Rt 9A in both directions dramatically. Then, with a bit less traffic, Knollwood Road will begin to back up. As this road backs up in both directions, it will impact the exits on I-287 at several exits. Next to get backed up will be Grasslands Road, which parallels Rt 119, the final piece of the backed up puzzle. We should also see an increase in motor vehicle accidents.

There are limited roadway options to travel north and south through the Elmsford and northern Unincorporated Greenburgh area: Rt 9A, Knollwood Road and a few local “cut through” streets, that again still empty to both these roads. East and west has Rt 119 (Elmsford’s Main Street), Payne Street, and Grasslands Road, again with a few local “cut through” streets. An improved and better flow through of traffic on a few of these roads has been talked about for the last 50 years and yet we have not seen any solutions from any of our legislators or local politicians. Now that these repairs must be made, their lack of solutions and inaction will highlight their ineffectiveness as leaders. So while these “leaders” hold rallies advocating defiance of immigration laws or their hatred of our president, our neighborhoods, taxpayers and residents continue to suffer. This needs to end. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.