Town presses forward with speed reduction plans

Supervisor Robert McKeon said Dutchess County officials have apparently misunderstood requirements for setting speed limits on local roads and plans to press forward with efforts slow traffic in two areas.

The issue was addressed during a video conference meeting Monday, with the comments coming after a state Department of Transportation guideline was cited by county Department of Public Works as being a directive instead of correctly identifying it as an option.

“It turns out there never was a requirement that the local municipality fund a speed study,” McKeon said. “All of the language suggests that it would be a good idea if we were to provide it if we wanted to have it responded to in a timely manner.”

Town Board members have been seeking speed reductions near Mill Road Elementary School and in the College Park residential development. However, in response to a June 24 letter asking county Commissioner Robert Balkind to forward a request to the state he stated that the “NYSDOT...(is) now requiring that the municipality must provide” the necessary study data using “standard NYSDOT methodology.”

However, state engineer Lisa Mondello in a July 24 email to the town contradicted the county when clarifying that studies could be done by municipalities to expedite requests but not required.

“If a municipality or county is either unwilling or unable to submit study data for any reason, the NYSDOT will perform the speed study on the county or local roadway according to NYSDOT policy,” she wrote.

Mondello noted the state updated policies last year in an effort to reduce the “current workload and improve the timeliness of our studies” needed to evaluate speed change requests.

“The objective is to encourage local town boards to take a more active role in determining the need for speed limits on local highways by participating in the required data collection,” she wrote.

McKeon noted that there still may be reluctance by state officials to reduce speeds from 35 MPH to the requested 25 MPH.

“Any road that’s a quarter-mile or less, they don’t understand the importance or relevance of the speed limit on those roads,” he said. “Apparently they’ve come to the thinking that a road that small people really can’t attain a high speed (while driving). It doesn’t mean that people aren’t driving inappropriate speeds on those small roads, we know in fact they are, and that probably folks should be at much less than what is permissible.”