My Little Town

So, I read in the paper we’re getting a Moe’s around the corner — and another frozen yogurt joint. Terrific. You can’t have enough burritos in my neck of the woods. Or enough frozen yogurt. But what I have had enough of is the traffic.

Anyone who was in my end of Bethlehem before Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and the construction of vast new residential neighborhoods will tell you that things have gotten worse. We’ve gone from being at the edge of the country to being in the middle of suburban sprawl.

The people who run things in town tell me that our roads can accommodate all this growth, and to that I cry “bullshit.” Try driving on 9W during rush hour. Other roads, leading to the shopping centers, never intended for such heavy traffic, have become a nightmare as well.

The most recent scheme developers use to maximize their ROI is having their property rezoned as commercial hamlets, which allows for a brew of apartments, town homes, and commercial/retail space. One so called hamlet near my house is an abomination.

As for the impact on traffic, here’s a line I pulled from a commercial hamlet proposal being floated:

“The existing traffic during peak hours is 5,600 trips, and the expected number of trips following the build out of Route 9W would be 14,600.”

Awesome. That’s only a 9000 trip difference!

So enjoy your frozen yogurt and burritos. I’m looking forward to the final day I have to beat the traffic out of town. Sayonara, suckers.

9 thoughts on “My Little Town

    1. There was a rumor a few years ago that a Starbucks AND Chipolte were coming to that plaza. Welcome to Moe’s…

  1. I moved out of Glenmont (Hannay Lane) around a dozen years ago before all hell broke loose, and recent forays into the greater 9W/Fuera Bush Road conurbation have only reinforced the fact that the decision was a wise one.

    1. Interesting… I’ve always been curious about the houses on Hannay Lane; that must have nbeen an interesting place to live, and I gather that it too was less built up a dozen years ago.

      1. Back then there were only four houses on the street and the big Sprint fiber-microwave-switching-plex at the end of the road. Some big trucking companies were all there (A. Duie Pyle….best trucking firm name ever), and not much else, aside from the hotel and Stone Ends. We rented the house back then, and the landlord offered it to me for something around $68K at the time. I hit many a golf ball in that yard. I haven’t been down there in many years, and have no idea how it looks now.

  2. I drive down by the river, come up the hill to get to Tractor Supply. Blood pressure and car insurance rates both are lower as a result. The traffic at the Five Corners (of Hell) in Delmar actually seems more sane, and there appears to be less cell phone yammering-while-driving.

  3. I grew up in what is now known as “Old Delmar” before the sprawl and influx of refugees from the city of Albany. I remember when what is now the Town Hall was the Delmar Public School, when the Four Corners had some homes instead of all businesses and banks, when we would actually ride our bikes to school and there were no traffic problems, when the bridge over the Normanskill was two lanes instead of four. I remember having a block party, or at least a street party, every summer when we could all do a cookout on the two side by side cul de sacs and we actually knew our neighbors. When my five siblings and I would scatter around the neighborhood and we knew it was time to come home when Mom rang a school bell three times. One of the neighbors with five kids would ring theirs four times so we knew whose was whose. As I go visit my folks this afternoon I will drive by and reminisce and probably shed a tear or too.

  4. No tears but sad still. Anger, though, from driving south down 787 past downtown and seeing the graffiti on the back of the exit signs. And some people call it “street art”. And what about the equipment building on the Thruway coming north before exit 24, where the WROW tower is? Every once in a while the owner paints it over and then within a week it is covered over again in gang graffiti. Is painting a skill they teach at Job Corps?

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