I have frequently blogged about what has happened after the fact; but this blog is about something that hasn’t happened yet:
Traffic control on Lansingville Road.
These blogs will update readers on the effort being made to establish traffic management on this beleaguered rural road.
What is Lansingville Road?
It’s a 20ft wide north-south strip of asphalt with narrow gravel shoulders, sandwiched in between two New York State highways less than 4 miles apart.
Then why take Lansingville Road?
There is no traffic management whatsoever. The County’s policy of ignoring the rural community, and refusing to patrol or manage traffic on this road; means that drivers can drive however they want, at whatever speed they want. Even drivers with commercial licenses feel no need to follow the laws.
The mean speed on Lansingville Road has increased 5 mph in the last three years alone, and the 85th percentile is up to 62 mph; despite local and farm traffic traveling under 45 mph. In a 2019 speed volume check: vehicles were recorded at speeds of up to 90 mph.
Gravel trucks coming from the next county sometimes make hundreds of trips a day on Lansingville; roaring up and down the middle of the narrow roadway and further destroying its already cracking surface.
Last week I saw a Town dump truck and two cars passing a farm tractor with agricultural equipment, traveling as a single unit, across a double-yellow line into the opposite lane, and on a curve. And this is an everyday example of the reckless driving plaguing this once quiet and safe roadway.
My neighbor tells of how he used to walk the entire 1,600 foot length of his long driveway and not see one vehicle passing by on the road. Now, he has to wait for four or five cars and trucks just to have enough space to run across the road to his mailbox.
Why isn’t something being done?
The County Highway supervisor has twice stated [even in the face of photographic proof] that this truck traffic “was found to be Agriculture Trucks cutting the fields.”
An Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council representative put the issue off with talk of petitions and documentation; but ended by stating that their final decisions were made of the basis of the “greater good.”
Will the County’s concern for the safety and welfare of the rural community ever rise above the convenience and profit of the Collegiate Corporations and their cronies?
No.
I will blog as events unfold.
All this morning, every 15 or 20 minutes, a cement mixer thundered by. [Probably carrying cuttings from the fields.]