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Schumer pushes for six-lane Route 17
 March 19, 2007
By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record

It would be an enormous undertaking, the likes of which haven't been seen here since a 20-mile stretch of I-287 was finished in 1993.

The ambitious notion is to expand Route 17 from four lanes to six, all the way from Harriman to Monticello, turning a central artery of Orange and Sullivan counties into a superhighway with the look and feel of the Thruway.

The asphalt warrior pushing for this work is Sen. Charles Schumer. In his view, the state Department of Transportation better start planning third lanes pronto, before one or more casinos open in the Catskills and overwhelm traffic on a road that already gets backed up on summer weekends.

OK, problem No. 1: the gargantuan cost of building two lanes for 45 miles.

Two years ago, when New York's senior senator and other public officials held a news conference in Bloomingburg to promote the concept, Schumer estimated it could cost as much as $900 million — the sort of sum that makes transportation planners either laugh or weep.

So how realistic is Schumer's six-lane dream?

More so than it might seem.

For now, the DOT will only say publicly that it's studying the cost and feasibility of adding lanes, along with other work that might be done to finish converting Route 17 to Interstate 86. The agency hopes to complete its study by early 2008, according to a DOT spokeswoman.

But Orange County Planner David Church said the state has already acknowledged the inevitability of adding lanes, even if the project is too distant and conceptual to appear on any funding priority lists.

"It's maybe 10 or 20 years out, realistically," he said.

The impetus for Schumer's latest traffic alert — a step-on-it letter to New York's acting DOT commissioner this month — was Gov. Spitzer's two-thumbs-up endorsement of a proposed casino at Monticello Raceway.

Hopes for roulette wheels in Sullivan County have been dashed often enough over the years to dampen any excitement. But Spitzer's support did revive the prospects for both Indian gaming and the road backups that could accompany it.

Last month, a coalition of groups led by the National Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of letting the St. Regis Mohawks get away with a virtually nonexistent environmental review for its Monticello Raceway casino plan.

Among their demands: an in-depth study of how the project would affect Route 17 traffic.

However skimpy, the tribe's review does offer these traffic estimates: more than 600 incoming vehicles per hour during the Friday night rush and almost 900 departures per hour on Sunday afternoons, when everybody leaves the Catskills.

Most of those casino visitors would use Route 17, which has hourly peaks of 3,000 or more vehicles on those days.

The cumulative impact could be even worse, warns Erich Arcement, a traffic consultant working for the NRDC. He asks: What if there is also a big concert at the nearby Bethel Woods Center for the Arts? What if one or two other casinos also open in the vicinity?

Michael Edelstein, president of the watchdog group Orange Environment — which joined NRDC in the lawsuit — acknowledges that additional Route 17 lanes would help absorb the resulting traffic, but he calls it an inadequate response to the problem.

He'd like to shift the discussion toward mass transit, a more environmentally friendly approach. He suggests, for instance, considering a new rail line or dedicated road lanes for buses and car pools.

"You've got to do something to get people into buses and trains," Edelstein said.

Of course, railroad lines aren't cheap, either.

Jeffrey Zupan, a senior fellow at the Manhattan-based Regional Plan Association, argues there would never be enough riders in Orange and Sullivan counties to justify the cost of something like the light-rail system just built in urban Hudson County, New Jersey.

"Light rail is a non-starter," he said. "It requires much more density than you're ever going to get in that area."

His suggestion? The same as what Schumer said: Add more lanes to Route 17, and stick the casino operators with the bill.

"They are causing the problem," Zupan said. "Therefore, they should pay."

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