Salina, NY -- The CSX railroad bridge over Onondaga Lake Parkway is notorious for getting hit by tall vehicles whose drivers attempt to go under it despite warning signs and flashing lights. That has happened repeatedly over the years, but a bus accident early Saturday was the first fatal accident since at least 1991 as a result of a...
View full sizeA large sign, with flashing yellow lights, hangs above the northbound lane of Onondaga Lake Parkway. It's one of many signs that alert motorists of the low railroad bridge that crosses the road. The signs advise of a 10-foot, 9-inch height restriction along the parkway. Salina, NY -- The CSX railroad bridge over Onondaga Lake Parkway is notorious for getting hit by tall vehicles whose drivers attempt to go under it despite warning signs and flashing lights.
That has happened repeatedly over the years, but a bus accident early Saturday was the first fatal accident since at least 1991 as a result of a too-tall vehicle hitting the bridge, according to state Department of Transportation accident data.
A check of The Post-Standard archives going back to the mid 1980s turned up no accounts of such fatalities.
Back in the mid 1990s, then-Onondaga County Legislature chairman Bill Sanford feared someone would be killed. That came back to him Saturday when he heard four people died after a two-decker Megabus passenger coach smashed into the bridge.
Those thoughts came back to Sanford, plus another. “That this possibly could have been avoided if there was some kind of a warning system other than what they had there,” he said. He had worried in particular about drivers who could not read and had someone research ways to improve the bridge’s safety.
An option that made good common sense and had been used successfully elsewhere was to hang chains across the parkway a half mile or so from the bridge at the same clearance as the bridge, he said. The metal chains clanging against a truck would do relative little damage but would alert the driver that something was up, Sanford said.
“That was one thing that I always thought might be done there to make sure someone doesn’t get killed, but it wasn’t done. I don’t know why,” he said. The county’s transportation committee looked into at the issue at time, and Sanford said he would like to see the county take it up again.
View full sizeA firefighter photographs the scene of a fatal Megabus accident on Onondaga Lake Parkway in Salina early Saturday morning. At about 13 feet tall, the bus was too tall to fit under the railroad bridge that crosses the parkway. The bridge is already marked by flashing lights, signs, and a high visibility strip all they way across the structure, said Gene Cilento, speaking for the state Department of Transportation. There are no obvious ways to make things better, he said.
You could lower the road, which may cause flooding, you could raise or remove the bridge or add more signs, Cilento said.
“It’s not an easy situation to solve,” said James D’Agostino, director of the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council. The bridge is very well signed and there is ample information on the road to inform drivers it is coming, he said.
D’Agostino has heard of “break-away bars” placed a distance away from a bridge that a tall vehicle could hit as a warning, but he could not say if those devices would be applicable in this situation.
The council has not studied the bridge but could do so if one of its member agencies requested it, he said. They include the county and state departments of transportation, he said.
Contact Maureen Nolan 470-2185 or mnolan@syracuse.com.