Guardrails Set to Be Installed This Year Along Route 17 in Orange County

By The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y.

Feb. 5–The state Department of Transportation’s new schedule for converting the 24 miles of Route 17 in Orange County to Interstate 86 envisions completing the task in 2010-11.

“As we get further out, this could still change, but right now this is our schedule,” said Rich Peters, the DOT’s regional planning manager, in briefing the Orange County Transportation Council last week.

The schedule calls for the DOT to finish raising bridge clearances first and address general modifications to the highway and its interchanges second. The cost is now estimated at $289 million.

Contracts to build three more parts of the overall project will be awarded this year and contracts for two others will continue this year. The five contracts have a value of roughly $25 million.

What Peters calls “the two biggies” — reconstruction of Exit 122 at Crystal Run Road in the Town of Wallkill and Exit 131 at Route 32 and the New York State Thruway in the Town of Woodbury — will begin in 2009 and end in 2010 or 2011.

“Our goal is really to get all the critical elements of the conversion under construction in 2009,” said Peters.

Left behind in all this are any resulting changes to roads adjacent to Route 17 exits. These projects will be tackled independently of the conversion. Peters assured mayors and supervisors on the transportation council that communities will have ample time to weigh in on them.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has pledged to fast-track the highway conversion, ratifying the conviction of his predecessor, George Pataki, that interstate designation is a sound economic development strategy for New York’s Southern Tier. The state originally wanted to complete the conversion by 2010, but the cost has forced project after project to be delayed.

The DOT only had to spend $5 million to convert the western half of Route 17 to I-86, the 177 miles from Jamestown to Elmira, in 1999. Conversion of the eastern half, the 196 miles from Elmira to Harriman, however, will exceed $600 million because of the scope of the work: raising bridge clearances, closing or combining exits, eliminating at-grade intersections, separating east-west lanes and transforming partial interchanges into full ones.

The difference in expense reflects the age of Route 17 in different parts of the state. The highway was built later in the Southern Tier and, as a result, closer to interstate standards. But moving east, into Chemung, Delaware and Sullivan counties, Route 17 still has such interstate no-nos as traffic lights, driveways and at-grade cross streets.

As part of the conversion, Peters said the DOT has offered to build the Town of Wallkill a bridge over Route 17 between its two major shopping centers, the Galleria at Crystal Run and Orange Plaza.

The town had planned to build a tunnel beneath Route 17 to connect the two malls and relieve traffic on Route 211, but Wallkill Supervisor John Ward said a bridge will do very nicely.

“We’re excited about getting help from the DOT on this because now it will happen sooner,” said Ward.

Peters said the conversion work will produce a lot of fill in that area and make it fairly cheap and easy for the DOT to build a bridge.

The conversion will also incorporate two key projects in the Towns of Monroe and Woodbury. One is the extension of Larkin Drive to create a service road between Routes 32 and 208 on the west side of Route 17 as an alternative to the highway for local residents. Larkin Drive runs parallel to 17 along Harriman Commons.

The other is the construction of a loop off Route 32 over 17 at the Thruway entrance, to eliminate the left-hand turns across traffic that clogs Route 32 near Woodbury Common Premium Outlets.

Inherent in the DOT’s schedule are two unspoken decisions. Talk about ending the conversion at I-84 rather than the Thruway (I-87) or about widening Route 17 to six lanes as part of the conversion is over.

Peters said simple logic argued against segmenting Route 17 into interstate and non-interstate sections in Orange County.

And those six lanes that the county thinks might be necessary if and when casinos come to Sullivan County?

“A project like that takes a long time and a lot of money,” said Peters. “We’d have to line up the money and then we’d have to do the environmental review — a process that takes a minimum of five years. So the conversion won’t preclude widening the highway eventually, but it won’t build it either.”

Steel guardrails will be installed in the median on most of Route 17 in Orange County this year. The state Department of Transportation will solicit bids for the project in March. A contract should be awarded in the spring and the work should be completed before winter.

Median barriers were originally scheduled to be installed as part of Route 17′s conversion to Interstate 86 over the next several years, but the DOT agreed to advance the work after a public outcry followed a string of fatal cross-over accidents.

Josh Ribakove, a spokesman at the DOT’s regional office, said the barriers will be installed from Exit 131 at Route 32 in the Town of Woodbury to Exit 121 at I-84 in the Town of Wallkill.

The remaining section, from I-84 to the Sullivan County line, will be done in 2008 as part of the I-86 upgrade.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y.

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