3- Overview of Traffic Issues Addressed by the Planning Board and RUPCO

In this post, we will look at only a few comments made and questions raised on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The comments and questions chosen here are grouped into two problems, expressed here as sight distance and increased traffic (both issues occur at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212.) For each of the two issues, we will look at RUPCO's response.

(1) Sight Distance.

Warren Replansky, the attorney for the group called SAGE, which opposes this housing project, writes a letter that addresses, among several other issues, sight distance at Playhouse Lane and Rt. 212. He writes:

"Although the applicant's Traffic Engineer outlined sight distance issues at Route 212 with Playhouse Lane and NYS Route 212 with Plochmann Lane (see attached photo A), the applicant has not committed to the mitigation. What letters of written assurances exist that the NYSDOT is committed to the improvements? Do the improvements require disturbances on private property? If so, does the private property owner consent to these disturbances"

And further, "Sight distance at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Edgewood Lane must be addressed this intersection will be impacted by traffic accessing the new private road entering the Woodstock Commons site. "

From the Planning Board, Paul Shultis Jr. submitted this brief note: "Traffic: sight distance at Playhouse Lane & 212."

This first issue addresses the ability or inability of a driver leaving Playhouse Lane to see cars coming from the left on Route 212. At present, the sight line is very short. Additional traffic is thought to pose a safety problem, and the commenters asked RUPCO what they planned to do about this, when introducing much more traffic on Playhouse Lane.

RUPCO's response to the sight line problem is basically that RUPCO does not possess the power of condemnation. This means, among other things, that RUPCO cannot force either the State, which controls Route 212, or the owner of the land abutting the intersection, to remedy the limited sight line by cutting down trees or by any other measures.

In addition, RUPCO states "Although a Planning Board may consider the adequacy of existing off-site streets in analyzing a development proposal, it is submitted that a Planning Board may not require a developer to improve existing roads and/or sidewalks lying outside a proposed development." Case law is cited to support this. So, what this means is that although the proposed project will bring more cars to the intersection that features an inadequate sight line, the developer, RUPCO cannot be held responsible to improve the sight line at the intersection.

(2) Increased Traffic.

RUPCO argues, citing case law, "Specifically with respect to increased traffic posed by the project, a Planning Board may not deny a development proposal as a result of a traffic concerns unless the record substantiates that the purported hazard from the proposed use will be greater than that which results from uses permitted by right in the same zone." This means that if other houses were built where RUPCO wants to build, but without the special use permit that RUPCO has, the town cannot deny RUPCO its right to develop if the other houses would generate the same amount of traffic.

What this means is that if houses were built one by one on the land that RUPCO wants to build on, but without special use permits, for the town to deny RUPCO's right to develop, it must be shown that the development by individuals buying parcels of land and developing them would cause less hazard than the RUPCO development would cause.

In my opinion, and I'll get into this later, increased traffic in itself is not a problem. However, it should be easy to argue that without RUPCO's special use permit, many fewer households would be located at the end of Playhouse Lane. The area is zoned for much larger lots than multi-family housing, so it would be impossible to build as many as 53 households without a special use permit. While this argument proves that the traffic, absent a special use permit, would be greater with the RUPCO project built, it does not prove that the hazard at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212 would be greater with the RUPCO project.

To address the hazard at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212, it is necessary to analyze the the way the term "hazard" has been used, and also how the traffic patterns have been presented in the traffic study. This will be done in another blog post.

To summarize, there are two traffic issues raised in comments to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and RUPCO's response: The sight Distance at the intersection of Route 212 and Playhouse Lane, and the RUPCO project-generated increased traffic volume at that intersection.