The Village of Croton-on-Hudson has won a Gold Award for efforts during 2020 in AAA Northeast’s Community Traffic Safety Awards Program, Director of Public & Government Affairs, John Corlett announced today. AAA has long recognized communities that make outstanding efforts to make the region’s roads safer for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 was a difficult year to maintain many of the traditional traffic safety efforts typically conducted. However, the Village was cited for continuing and adjusting its many traffic safety efforts for 2020 including the completion of the Croton Point Avenue Traffic Improvement Project, designed to improve traffic flow and safety in the corridor leading to the Croton Harmon Train Station.
The Village had also conducted child car seat inspections and seat belt enforcement check points, contributing to safer driving.
Truly one wonders about the “criteria” used in these “gold awards”.
You just have to love the granting of awards without any explicit data. What was the number of incidents that existed before the “improvement” that required the expenditure of 4.5 million dollars of taxpayer money (approx 300% over initial estimates). No data. The southbound exit off of 9A had required a full stop before the improvement; now vehicles can move freely through the intersection at higher speeds on a green or YELLOW light. A westbound cyclist can also cross the intersection (in front of the 9A southbound traffic) on a green or YELLOW light. Thankfully, there aren’t that many cyclists that cross this intersection, but its just a matter of time before both bicycle or automobile move through a yellow light (while the other jumps a green light) and someone gets seriously hurt. Safer..no way.
The Croton Point Avenue Project was a gross misuse of $4.5 million in taxpayer funds for “improvements” that have made travel through the area more difficult and time consuming because of the multiplicity of traffic lights; has actually reduced safety by narrowing the width of automobile travel lanes by about 10%; “protecting” bicyclists (of whom there are almost none) with nothing more than a stripe painted on the pavement; and adding a sidewalk that almost no one will use when there was originally a perfectly serviceable sidewalk along one side of the street.
And, of course, the ostensible purpose of the project was to improve flow in and out of the station parking lot. But guess what? the number of people using the lot has declined dramatically due to the pandemic, negating the need for the project as well as costing the Village of Croton millions of dollars a year in revenue. But we still have to pay off the bonds that funded the project which forms only a part of the enormous debt carried by the village, one of the most indebted villages in all of New York State.
Rather than a Gold Award, the Village of Croton deserves a Booby Prize for this egregious waste of public funds.