Liverpool, NY -- Major structural fixes to prevent trucks and buses from hitting the railroad bridge above the Onondaga Lake Parkway are impractical, expensive and unlikely, the state’s top roads official said Friday. At this point, the state Department of Transportation isn’t studying raising the bridge or lowering the road, said Stanley Gee, DOT acting commissioner. “There might be...
Cars travel on the Onondaga Lake Parkway under the CSX bridge towards Liverpool Sunday afternoon. The site was the scene of a bus crash early Sept. 11 that killed four people. Liverpool, NY -- Major structural fixes to prevent trucks and buses from hitting the railroad bridge above the Onondaga Lake Parkway are impractical, expensive and unlikely, the state’s top roads official said Friday.
At this point, the state Department of Transportation isn’t studying raising the bridge or lowering the road, said Stanley Gee, DOT acting commissioner. “There might be more prudent and cost-effective solutions to this problem than these capital-intensive projects.”
Instead, Gee said, the state is exploring:
• Raising some warning signs to make them more visible to truck and bus drivers.
• Improving police enforcement of high-vehicle and distracted-driver laws.
• Restricting trucks with more than three axles from the parkway.
• Encouraging GPS manufacturers to put bridge height data in their units.
• Deploying height-detection systems that would alert truckers to too-tall vehicles.
The parkway bridge has been hit 10 times in the past five years, Gee said. Before Saturday’s Megabus crash that killed four people, the last hit was in 2008.
Gee said he’s not aware of any other deaths from trucks or buses hitting bridges in New York.
Gee and DOT engineers met this week with Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney. He said engineers will also meet Tuesday with the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council.
One partial solution would combine the installation of infrared beams to detect too-tall vehicles and installing flashlights to alert the drivers. Gee noted that a similar system with loud alarms had been tried on the parkway decades ago, but the system gave too many false readings from snow.
“We’re trying a newer version of that technology Downstate,” he said, adding there’s no data on its effectiveness yet. There is no data yet on how effective that has been, Gee said.
There are a dozen signs on the parkway between Interstate 81 and the bridge warning truckers of the 10-foot-9 clearance. Gee said engineers are looking at whether those signs are big enough and are at the optimal height for truckers and bus drivers.
“They’re set at what we call the design height,” he said. “They’re targeted for all vehicles that would use the parkway. We want to make sure the ones that sit up high are easy for (truckers and bus drivers) to read.”
The state is also studying the four-lane parkway itself, which has a 55-mph speed limit, no median and 23,000 vehicles a day. Since 1991, there have been at least five fatal crashes along the parkway, according to the DOT.
The latest was Aug. 16, when a North Syracuse woman died in a head-on crash after a car swerved into her lane.
Solutions to the bridge hits are plentiful, but, Gee said, many involve major construction that would be expensive and perhaps even impossible.
Raising the privately owned railroad bridge, for example, poses a number of legal and engineering problems. Because trains can only make very gradual climbs, a higher bridge would mean rebuilding and gradually raising the track for miles on either side. In addition, Gee said, the tracks cross at least one road not far from the parkway.
Lowering the road could cause flooding. Raising the road to clear the top of the bridge would require starting the climb in downtown Syracuse, Gee said.
“We have a lot of capital needs in that area now that need to be funded as well,” he said. “We have 17,000 bridges across the state that are in disrepair and need attention. There are a lot of needs out there.”
Gee noted that sheriff’s investigators believe the bus driver was distracted by his personal GPS unit as he tried to find the bus station.
“There’s only so much we can do if they’re not paying attention,” Gee said.
--Contact Glenn Coin at gcoin@syracuse.com or 470-3251.