The Board of Fire Commissioners has expressed its concern too this week in regards to Conrail’s intended closure of part of Route 9 for the repairs of its rail.
Fire Commissioner Larry Loigman tells TLS that a planning meeting with Conrail took place several months ago with officials from the Fire District, Police Department, Engineer’s office, Township manager’s office and others, and were told that “they would try to take into consideration our traffic problems,” and would try to schedule the work for a different time which proved to be less congested. “Apparently that didn’t happen,” Loigman says.
At the Board meeting this week, Loigman says, the voted in support of a weekend closure.
“We believe that public safety requires that the construction take place on a weekend,” Loigman said. The Mayor also expressed his outrage about the plan.
Unless rescheduled, the rail company intends to shut Route 9 between John Street and Central Avenue for November 18 – 19, from 7 am to 7 pm each day.
Once Route 9 is closed on November 18, it will not reopen until the evening of the 19th. The following is the planned traffic pattern during those times:
SOUTHBOUND ROUTE #9:
Route #9 south bound – All traffic will be detoured west on Central Avenue to Cross Street and then back out to Route #9 south.
NORTHBOUND TRAFFIC
Route #9 north bound (Commercial Truck Traffic) will be detoured to Oak Street to New Hampshire Avenue to Cedarbridge Avenue to South Clifton Avenue onto Route #88 and back onto Route#9 North.
Route #9 north bound (Vehicular Traffic) will be detoured at Pine Street to New Hampshire Avenue to Cedarbridge Avenue to South Clifton Avenue to Route #88 and back onto Route #9 north.
[TLS]
Wow. What a mess this will be… might as well cut the bus funding for those days, as traffic will be at a standstill anyways!
Call the Governor’s office!
He fully understands the consequences of shutting a major artery like this in middle of the week and would assist in preventing another catastrophe.
to Railgate: what did they say when you called?
that is just nuts they should force them to do this over pesach or shabbos chance( one month away ) etc. This will destroy the entire city for two days and the stores on the nine will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business. Have fun getting to first commerce bank! they should throw contrail out and let them build their tracks someplace else we don’t use it and don’t need it. lets see tracks from old bridge detour to cleveland around the grand canyon and back to route 70!
To just Curious:
They answered that they need our public officials to reach out to them.
Is there an email address that we can send complaints to Conrail?
It would seem the ideal time for this is during chanukah vacations.
The proposed detours are insane. Guess they don’t want all that traffic on Sunset or MLK.
It is not the nine, it is route 9. Also maybe you and yours don’t use the contrail tracks but they are used by some people a couple of times a week and every Thursday evening you hear them coming thru town so they are necessary to someone.
Menashe
Where do you think the lumber in your house comes from our the shingles on your roof. The railroad tracks stop in most of the supply houses to drop off material. That includes Woodhaven on james st as well as allied and more. But if that’s not important to you then the tracks must be obsolete
What’s going to stop heavy westbound traffic from turning left onto Sunset down to James back to 9 or Williams and Massachussets?. Will be a nightmare.
Just curious….who exactly is Conrail to decide if and when to shut down a major artery??? It is up to THEM? What if the person making this decision has an IQ below freezing??? Just totally crazy. This needs to be done Friday night and Saturday. There is NO other option.
Fuhgetabout it. It’s gonna snow. Ooof.
Believe it or not laws exist still today that exempts the railroad and allows them authority. About 1995 some laws were retracted which pretty much allowed them to do what they wanted. It took the Supreme Court to change some of this. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Of course Hashem is deciding anyway.
besideall the carswhat on earth is going to happen with the buses? when we were told for two days to drive our kids regarding the bus situation it was a living nightmare how will this even be possible: the kids will get to school and playgroup at noon