MAy 25, 2012

Editorial

No admittance

When the Crane Road Bridge on the Bronx River Parkway is being rebuilt we’ll be able to get out of the village but it will be hard to get in.

The plans by the Westchester County Department of Public Works call for closing the Crane Road exits, northbound and southbound, for two years of the project’s three-year duration. The Pipeline entrance to the Bronx River Parkway southbound will be closed the entire time. In the county’s description of the project (available online at westchestergov.com), there’s no mention of the Ardsley Road exit from the southbound BRP, which does not permit left turns into the village. Presumably cars will still be able to get on the BRP going south at Ardsley Road.

The bridge work is scheduled to begin soon, and the Crane Road exits will remain open for the first 10 months. But for two years thereafter there will be no entrance into upper Scarsdale Village from the Bronx River Parkway. For cars traveling north on the BRP, the closest exit to the village will be Ogden Road; southbound traffic will have to go all the way to Harney Road in Eastchester, then double back on Garth Road or Scarsdale Avenue.

It’s obvious that the northbound Crane Road exit off the parkway has to be closed for the duration: it’s right in the middle of the bridge. And a harrowing maneuver it is — a blind hairpin turn onto East Parkway with the added challenge of cars coming at you from the southbound BRP exit and Crane Road. The good news is, the turning radius off the new bridge will be less severe, accomplished by taking a small section of the north end of the Merchants Lot. A dedicated exit ramp will provide stacking room for four to five vehicles off the bridge travel lanes. The ramp will also carry a pedestrian bridge over the tracks to a ramp leading to the Metro-North southbound platform, an improvement the village requested.  

But why must the southbound BRP exit to Crane Road, far from the actual construction on the bridge, be closed? Why not allow cars exiting the parkway southbound to get directly onto Crane by closing off the connector that leads to East Parkway, avoiding the East Parkway U-turn? Wouldn’t that Crane Road to East Parkway connector have to be closed anyway?

The county plans to shut off the traffic signal at the Crane Road exit because their traffic studies show northbound traffic will back up when the bridge is narrowed to one lane northbound. We find it hard to believe that traffic will back up past Harney Road just because of the Crane Road traffic signal, as the county predicts. An occasional short BRP backup is not nearly as onerous to drivers as closing off the southbound Crane Road exit is to people heading into Scarsdale and the merchants who depend on their business. We don’t remember any delays during the years-long reconstruction of the Woodlands Viaduct Bridge of the BRP just north of Claremont Road. It too was narrowed to one lane during construction.

The Crane Road southbound exit shutdown will increase traffic on parts of Greenacres and Walworth avenues and Fox Meadow Road. (Fortunately, the northbound entrance to the parkway is due to remain open.) This is traffic neither the roadbed nor the residents should have to bear.

We urge village residents to join the chamber in lobbying the county to keep the southbound Crane Road exit open and the traffic signal operational — at least after the two-hour morning peak period of parkway traffic. A left turn should also be allowed into the village from the Ardsley Road exit, at least for the duration of the project.

The Crane Road Bridge was built in 1924 and there is no question that it has to be rebuilt. We understand that drivers passing through Scarsdale will be inconvenienced as will Scarsdale residents and businesses. But we think too much consideration is being given to the former and not enough to the latter two. At most, through traffic will be slightly delayed at certain times during the three years of the construction. But for some village businesses, the exit shutdown could be fatal, especially on top of the delays and aggravation caused by the Popham Road Bridge reconstruction. When the dust clears, we’ll have two beautiful new bridges. Let’s hope we still have a vibrant business center between them.

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