47- Steve Yoder, Step Right Up, and Bring Your Friends

We have another person dedicating himself to solving the current and possibly worse future traffic safety problem at Playhouse Lane and Route 212.

A couple of weeks ago in the letters section of the Woodstock Times, Steve Yoder, (who I do not know, yet,) suggested that the town simply ask people to park in back of Playhouse Plaza, not in the spaces in front.

One week ago I answered this suggestion by claiming that that would constitute a taking of private property and would be illegal, and that if the town wanted to condemn the property (using the power of eminent domain,) it would cost the town a lot of money.

Mr. Yoder concurred with my analysis, in general, I would say, and suggested that a bunch of stakeholders get together and discuss ways to mitigate this safety hazard.

I think it is safe to say, at this point, that Mr. Yoder and I are not the only two people who think there is a problem at this intersection. A traffic engineer, hired by the Planning Board, said that RUPCO's project WOULD pose a potential safety hazard at the intersection in question.

This intersection's safety concern is something that nobody wants to deal with. The Planning Board doesn't, and seems to have accepted some incompetent Creighton Manning traffic study that does not even address safety, only traffic.

Thank you, Steve Yoder. Why don't you round up everybody who you think should attend a meeting to solve the intersection problem, before the town can accept a large development whose traffic travels through it. I will mark my calendar. Please feel free to use this blog to organize and contact me and others.

46- Slide Show- Part of Tuesday Presentation

Here, uploaded onto my own business website, are my slides from the Tuesday night presentation. You do not need powerpoint on your computer to view the slide show. My notes are presented below the slides as well, although there are some errors in the notes, as they were copied and pasted from slide to slide, so some of them do not correspond to the slide under which they appear. This should be obvious, however I would like to suggest that you do not rely on the notes information under any slide in case the notes are placed under the wrong slide.


http://www.murrayhillbooks.com/rupcoslides_files/frame.htm


(I do not know what to do in the event you cannot access this slide show, but please do let me know if this current placement on the website is not working for you.)

45- It's All Right Here On Video

My presentation, with questions and answers, lasted about 75 minutes. In the interest of viewer friendliness, I have cut the video into eleven parts, and have uploaded them to youtube, where you can watch them, embedded and a bit further down on this very page.

The eleven parts of this video correspond to the themes or natural sections of the presentation. I will list them here and then again just above the video where it is embedded.

It is best to watch them in order, but if you are only interested in one topic, you will get most of what you need on that topic by watching only the segment named for it. However, I cannot guarantee that I have not made comments on topics outside of the sections named for those topics.

Topics and format of the presentation, and the way the video is split up is as follows:

1- Introduction and Outline of Presentation
2- Playhouse Lane- How Wide? -safety
3- Playhouse-212 intersection hazard - liability
4- Playhouse-212 intersection hazard - study methodology
5- Geothermal Energy and Woodstock Commons
6- Who Will Live in Woodstock Commons
7- Who Owns Woodstock Commons (Part I) AND Who Pays for it?
8- Alternative Housing Ownership Structure, with town having some equity.
9- Who Owns Woodstock Commons? (Part II)
10- Who Owns Woodstock Commons? (Part III)
11- Questions, Discussion.




1- Introduction and Outline of Presentation:




2- Playhouse Lane- How Wide? -safety




3- Playhouse-212 intersection hazard - liability


4- Playhouse-212 intersection hazard - study methodology


5- Geothermal Energy and Woodstock Commons




6- Who Will Live in Woodstock Commons?




7- Who Owns Woodstock Commons (Part I) AND Who Pays for it?




8- Alternative Housing Ownership Structure, with town having some equity.




9- Who Owns Woodstock Commons? (Part II)




10- Who Owns Woodstock Commons? (Part III)




11- Questions, Discussion.

44- The Tuesday Presentation

Thank you to all who braved the snow, ice, and slush Tuesday night to come out to the Woodstock Community Center. A dedicated and interested group showed up to listen and participate in an exploration of some crucial and timely facts previously unnoticed in RUPCO's application to build Woodstock Commons, a housing project that they claim will be affordable.

There will be a lot of ways to view this presentation in the coming hours and days.

First of all, the next post in this blog contains the presentation, divided up into 11 small clips. Second, the entire presentation should, if all goes well, be on the channel 23 carousel starting Sunday, Feb. 28. This can also be viewed on the internet and details of the airing times and access url will follow when ALL of that information is available. Third, watch for some segments to be broadcast and discussed on other public access shows, and in the Woodstock Times, from today forward.

I would like to announce that from this moment forward, this blog will be more comprehensive than the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212. From now on, I would like to call this blog:

"The TroubleS with RUPCO in Woodstock"

43- Just the Facts, Please.

This display ad runs today, Feb. 18, in the Woodstock Times (I hope.)

(Click it to enlarge and read.) (If you cannot enlarge it, it says this:)

This housing project will raise your taxes. This housing project is designed to be profitable... for RUPCO.
RUPCO: Just the Facts, Please.
Please join us for a presentation of the documented facts about RUPCO’s proposed housing project, “Woodstock Commons.” We will show you what RUPCO knows but does not want YOU to know. You deserve to know the facts.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 8:00 PM • Woodstock Community Center
This housing project may house only a handful of Woodstockers. This housing project will exacerbate a safety hazard.

I will be giving this presentation. It will last under an hour, followed by the inevitable Q&A. I have been assisted by several people in preparing this presentation, and most or all of them will be at this event to answer questions with me, since we all have different areas of experience and expertise. This is a collective effort on the part of a broad intersection of Woodstockers.

We hope to see you Tuesday.

42- Kevin O'Connor Bullies Paul Shultis Jr. Who Bullies Dara Trahan

RUPCO's Kevin O'Connor wants the project's Environmental Impact Statement for Woodstock Commons approved in a week. The professional planner, Dara, at the right end of the table, is making a very good case for one week being too short a time to simply command that she complete work with an already full agenda. Chair Paul Shultis Jr. has been bullying her on and off for much of the meeting. She tries to put her foot down, but gets a hard time from Shultis. When Shultis mentions that the vote might not come for another three weeks instead of in one week, Kevin O'Connor objects, minimizing Dara's workload. Paul lets O'Connor bully the board, and then Dara simply gives in and asks Paul to command her to perform his will.


Precious clip:

41- Woodstock Planning Board Hasn't a Clue- see the video

Well, here it is. Here is the discussion from Thursday, Feb. 11, during which Guy Kempe tells the planning board that a traffic issue at the intersection of Route 212 and Playhouse Lane falls under "site plan" rather than the FEIS.




David Corbett was quick to agree. Nobody else weighed in.

Guy Kempe went on to explain that this issue was a "239-m" which means that in Ulster County, an issue that used to be up to 500 feet from a site, and now can be further away from that site, can be examined under that site plan review IF it falls into one of the following categories:

• Compatibility of various land uses with one another.



• Traffic generating characteristics of various land uses in relation to the effect of such traffic on other land uses and to the adequacy of existing and proposed thoroughfare facilities.



• Impact of proposed land uses on existing and proposed county or state institutional or other uses.



• Protection of community character as regards to predominant land uses, population density and relation between residential and non-residential areas.



• Community appearance



• Drainage



• Community facilities



• Official development policies, municipal and county, as may be expressed through their comprehensive plans, capital programs or regulatory measures.



• Such other matters as may relate to the public convenience, to governmental efficiency and to the achieving and maintaining of a satisfactory community environment.
  

See that second one in the list, the one that I put in bold type? That basically means that the "traffic generating characteristics" of this project, as they pertain to the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212, can be evaluated under the site plan. And of course, safety or lack thereof is one of the characteristics of generated traffic.

And what that means is that the county can address it under site plan, but that for the public hearing, it fell under the FEIS, and could not be discussed since the public hearing that was limited to site plan review.

Although residents were not prohibited from voicing comments on the nights of the public hearings, I followed the stated rules and did not prepare a formal submission since I was told that I was not allowed.

I was also told personally by Paul Henderson on Feb. 11 that even though people spoke about this intersection at the Jan. 14 public hearing, these comments would not be considered, since they lay outside of the site plan.

As you can see on the video, the RUPCO planner in the red sweater, with the white beard, says that he covers the issue at hand in the FEIS. This leads me to wonder how Guy Kempe can claim that the issue is covered under the site plan review, when it has been thoroughly covered in the FEIS.

I am disturbed that nobody on the planning board knows where the issues at this intersection should be covered in the review process. They are silent, or go along with Guy Kempe, and do not think for themselves, particularly ignoring the fact that whatever process they are involved in, this intersection is "covered" in the another process.

I will follow up with the Ulster County planning board to check where this intersection and its traffic characteristics are covered, and whether they are interested in my research, instead of their misguided recommendation to install a left turn lane on Route 212.

40- The Blind Leading the Blind

This evening at a Woodstock Planning Board meeting, the board and representatives from RUPCO, including the executive director, discussed comments on and adjustments to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).

The FEIS concerns all kinds of effects from the project. While this review goes on, the board also is reviewing the SITE PLAN. The site plan review and the FEIS review are two parts of one large project.

Four weeks ago, the board held a hearing on the site plan and special use permit. Citizens were permitted to speak about the site plan, which is anything ON the 28 acres that have been designated as the "project site."

The intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212 is quite a way down the road from the property, and is not considered part of the site.

During the meeting, one board member, Paul Henderson, brought up a letter from the State Department of Transportation, addressing an issue at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212. For the purposes of this blog, the contents do not matter, except that the concern was entirely about traffic at the intersection.

In order to steer Paul Henderson's concern away from the agenda at hand, none other than Guy Kempe said to the others that this issue is covered in the site plan review. There was some doubt at the table, and Kempe confirmed it. I have the whole thing on video, but for right now, do not have the capability to extract that short clip.

It's bad enough that Guy Kempe still doesn't know the definition of the "site plan," but what's worse is that after 5 years or more, neither does anybody else on the planning board, at least not well enough to be able to differentiate between the site plan and the environment around the site.

After I turned off my video camera, I approached the board members, those who remained. I asked them to tell me whether the intersection of route 212 and Playhouse Lane was part of the site plan, or outside the site plan, and therefore belongs in the EIS. One board member, David Corbett, didn't know. Paul Henderson thought he knew, and Paul Shultis Jr. tried to figure it out on the spot.

I asked Paul Shultis Jr. to define the site plan. He said "the twenty-eight acres," which is true.

Why do I make such a big deal out of this?

Because.

Because, the community relations guy is allowed to mislead planning board members.

Because the planning board doesn't know the definitions it is supposed to know.

Because the planning board let itself steer an agenda item onto an inappropriate agenda, and off the appropriate one.

Because the town board wants the planning board to consider this intersection as part of the project, but the planning board considers it to be outside of the project. (I concluded this after Jeff Moran, town not-so-supervisor, told me to give a printout of this blog to the Planning Board, since the Planning board is lead agency on the RUPCO project, even though the Planning Board is not interested in this important intersection.)

39- Playhouse Lane: Looking Back, Looking Forward

I found a Woodstock Times article dated May 17, 2007. That's nearly 3 years ago. What this article does is show that the Planning Board, the current town supervisor, and RUPCO, are fully aware of the safety problem at Playhouse Lane and Route 212, and that this safety problem was confirmed by a traffic consultant, nearly three years ago.

First of all, I want to point out how RUPCO's attorney, Michael Moriello, has misled the planning board by playing with language, rather than addressing the substance of my testimony ln this issue. In a letter dated January 22, 2010, Moriello claims:

"The Woodstock Commons Site Development Plans and attendant traffic issues have been studied and analyzed by three (3) separate traffic engineers, [a list of departments]...

To your writer's knowledge, none of these persons/agencies have called Creighton Manning Engineering Traffic Studies "selective reasoning" or "dishonest" as Ms. Segal offered of record at the January 14, 2010 Public Hearing."

Moriello uses the direct quotation trick to avoid admitting to other traffic engineers calling Creighton Manning's study any synonym of incompetent, or wrong, or misleading, and avoiding any admission that there was any substantive disagreement about the study's findings.

Second, Woodstock's consultants, CT Male Associates, offered their opinion, not of the study, but of the safety situation at Playhouse Lane and Route 212, and that opinion, represented by Jim Edwards, CT Male's traffic expert, is that this intersection is unsafe. If Moriello had been doing anything other than dodging bullets, he would have refuted CT Male's expert opinion. Obviously, he does not have the ammunition to fight back with any argument of substance.

Third, the person on the planning board quoted as asking the question: whether this intersection is unsafe, was none other than Jeff Moran, who was on the planning board then, and is town supervisor now.

From the May 17, 2007 Woodstock Times article:

"So any mitigation would have to take property from both the Violette [restaurant] and Playhouse properties?" Moran asked. "Would approving this project create a potential safety issue?"

Yes, Edwards said.

Then later:

Grant, the planners' attorney, pointed out that they would be in their rights to turn down a project based on safety concerns a developer couldn't mitigate.

In the back of the room, RUPCO Executive Director Kevin O'Connor let out a loud sigh.

Mullally [former Planning Board Chair] said an urban planner might have to be called in, with Grant [Planning Board attorney] noting such costs couldn't be placed on the developer. Moran pointed out that RUPCO had noted in its DEIS that any off-site improvements were not their problem.

So, Jeff Moran is fully aware that CT Male thinks this intersection is hazardous, not because he heard MY argument, but because he heard the opinion of the Planning Board's traffic consultant.

I have to ask why, given that knowledge, has Jeff Moran, after being elected Town Supervisor, turned his back on this intersection altogether. This article shows an awareness of the safety hazard at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212, and Creighton Manning urges in its Access Management Guidelines that traffic at such a compromised location should be limited (NOT increased by about 500%).

It is foolish of the Town of Woodstock to fail to address this dangerous intersection. Enough experts (not just I the neighbor) have noted the safety problem, and enough town officials have been notified of these notes. The failure to reject RUPCO's plan on the basis of safety, coupled with the town's failure to address and mitigate the danger brought about by cars at Playhouse Plaza, cannot be justified.

In the future, if RUPCO is built at the end of Playhouse Lane, all of this evidence will be very public, and the very first person injured in an accident at Playhouse Lane and Route 212 could go after the town for negligence, and could have a pretty easy time collecting from the town. The town has casualty and liability insurance to protect it from such lawsuits. It is clear to me now that there is enough evidence to present to the New York Municipal Insurance Reciprocal (NYMIR) actuaries responsible for figuring out whether Woodstock is a bad insurance risk.

38- Just the Facts

Fact: Creighton Manning Engineering (CME), in a letter to the Woodstock Planning Board, states: "The section of Route 212 between Route 375 and Playhouse Lane is an example of poor access management."

Fact: In this same letter, CME states: "The conflicts created by the Playhouse Plaza curb-cut is a matter for the Town, NYSDOT, and the plaza owner to discuss."

Fact: CME, in a report called "Access Management Guidelines, prepared for the Ulster County Planning Board, states:

"There are a number of typical standards that have been proposed for distances
from the edge of an intersection to the first driveway. One principle is that
there should be no driveway entering within an intersection's functional
area. The functional area is defined as the length of typical peak hour
queue or the length of intersection turning lanes. A sample standard is shown
below [not reproduced here]. These types of standards can be
adapted into the zoning statute in several ways including an overlay zone
covering critical corridors. Communities can and should restrict high traffic
volumes where they [the standards] cannot be met."

The bold type is in the original document. The italics are mine.

Fact: RUPCO's project will make the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212 more crowded, not by increasing through traffic, but by increasing, by about 500%, the traffic moving into and out of Playhouse Lane, directly across from Playhouse Plaza.

Summary:
- CME gives our intersection a grade of POOR.
- CME tells the town of Woodstock, the state department of Transportation, and the Playhouse Plaza owner to work it out.
- CME tells Ulster County that where access management driveway standards cannot be met, traffic should be limited [not increased by 500%] by their communities.

We have a problem. RUPCO wants to increase danger at an intersection that leads to its project. When it was RUPCO's turn and responsibility to study the safety of the access TO the site, their traffic engineer, CME, never pointed to the poor access management. That is, during its initial study of the intersection, CME failed to point to this problem.

Now that I have uncovered this problem and shown a high frequency of accidents, CME admits to the problem they initially ignored, and wants the town, the state DOT and the Playhouse Plaza owner(s) to work out the problem.

Questions:
? Can RUPCO's project proceed without placing Woodstock motorists at greater risk?
? What needs to be done in order for this to happen?
? Will Playhouse Plaza owners give up their parking spaces for a housing development?
? How can we trust Creighton Manning Engineers after they ignored a glaring safety problem by manipulating study data?
? What will the town do?
? Is there a legal and equitable solution to this dilemma?

Answers: Stay tuned...

37 - The Increase in Traffic at 212 and Playhouse Lane

I forgot to add one thing about Creighton Manning's letter, the one submitted to the Woodstock Planning Board, about my public hearing (Jan. 14) comments on RUPCO's project.

Creighton Manning writes: "The speculation that the Woodstock Commons project related traffic will make the area of Playhouse Lane and Route 212 more hazardous can be hypothesized in connection with any amount of traffic added from residential or commercial projects, special events, the influx of weekend tourist, or even the commute of existing residents between work and home."

This sentence is idiotic and simply false. What it basically says is that there are many other causes for this intersection to experience more traffic. While this is true, the problematic traffic is not through traffic, but traffic that involves other than a straight trip through the intersection.

RUPCO's project would, according to their estimates, generate an added 420+ car trips per day, into and out of Playhouse Lane. There is NO other event or development that would result in that much added (and hazardous) traffic in that intersection.

The land upon which RUPCO wants to build could never accommodate 53 houses, not without RUPCO's special use permit. It would not even accommodate half that many houses, even if all of the land was built on, and all of the land cannot be built on because it is wetlands.

As for arguing that commuters will generate more traffic, how many trips can each of the 20 houses back there generate? Is Creighton Manning suggesting that this little neighborhood's residents, each and every one of them, will increase their commuting trips from one or two or three to twenty plus per day? Not unless we all go into the taxi business.

And how about events and weekend traffic? It would take a whole lot of events at the playhouse to increase car trips up Playhouse Lane by about 1500 per weekend day, every weekend of the year.

Creighton Manning's line of reasoning about traffic causality is colossally incompetent. But I'll say this much: it more or less matches their competence in the area of counting and reporting cars in an intersection.

36- RUPCO's Traffic Engineers Finally Admit to Problem at Intersection!!

Yes, it's true! RUPCO's Traffic Engineers Finally Admit to Problem at Intersection!!

That's the good news. The bad news is that the solution proposed by Creighton Manning, RUPCO's traffic engineers is this: they pass the buck to three parties: The Town of Woodstock (not the Woodstock Planning Board, but the Town itself,) The State Highway Department, and the owner of Playhouse Plaza.

The other good news is that with the letter I received on Thursday, from Guy Kempe, RUPCO's community relations person, Creighton Manning admits to omitting cars from its study because they did not "fit in" to the "standard methodology" used in such studies. This means that according to Creighton Manning, it is more important to stick to the standard methodology than to report the truth, when the truth cannot be represented using the standard methodology.

Is that too abstract? I'm sorry. How about if I show you the letter Creighton Manning wrote, and we'll look at it one sentence at a time. That will make it very clear. I photographed the letter, both sides. Here it is:

(Click images to enlarge and read the letter)

(I should have photographed this letter before writing notes on it, but I was so excited over its stupidity that I acted hastily and marked it up immediately. )

There are two items, both of them responses to my personal comments at the public hearing on Jan. 14, 2010. The first item is about the access road, and the second item is about the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212.

Item 1: This item is refuted in a similar argument as the lawyer's letter from a few days earlier. However, rather than to argue that the access management standards in the Creighton Manning 2003 report are not covered in these standards' "jurisdictional predicate," (see, that's legal language,) this engineer chooses to soften up legally and claim that "If these roads were high functioning, i.e. arterials or congested collector roads, these guidelines would be more applicable." Now, in the 2003 guidelines, nobody ever wrote anything about a collector road having to be congested in order to be covered. Nor was it written that the roads covered by the guidelines had to be high functioning. These were made up by this engineer, for this letter. But the most telling phrase used in this sentence is "more applicable." He is not saying that the guidelines are not applicable, just that if his made up standards were met, the guidelines would be MORE applicable. OK, so that means that his made up standards make these guidelines LESS applicable. What that really means is that the more traffic there is on a road, the more applicable are safety guidelines. I guess that makes sense. I mean, if there is more danger, there should be greater precautions. However, these guidelines are continuously applicable from "city streets" on up to State roads.

Then this letter goes on to call Playhouse Lane and Whites Lane an "intersection" when it is not that. In fact, did you know that there used to be no street called Playhouse Lane? The street we know as Playhouse Lane used to stretch from Edgewood Lane up to Whites Lane, and do you know what its name was? It was called Whites Lane. It's true. The Ulster County Survey Map still has it listed and drawn that way. That means that before the name change, this intersection not only was still not an intersection, it was simply a turn in Whites Lane. So give me a break, it's not an intersection, so do not even call it that in quotation marks. RUPCO wants to MAKE it an intersection by adding a road to the project. But now, it's not an intersection.

The letter says that the access road at this bend in the road is the "most logical and least impacting location." I think this statement is made in environmental terms, not safety terms. In fact, there is an environment versus safety trade-off.

The letter goes on to call the access road a "site driveway," which I do not understand. Isn't this road going to be a town road? Isn't the town going to clear it? That was my understanding. Now I'm not sure. This letter compares the RUPCO road, with the big bridge, to "other neighboring driveways," telling us that cars coming from all of these "driveways" will operate under stop control. So, does that mean that now there will NOT be a stop sign on Playhouse Lane where it turns into Whites Lane? There does not need to be one if this location is still not an intersection since the RUPCO road will be a "driveway."

Maybe somebody can help me out here. I have looked and looked, but I can't figure out what the plans are telling us, or what this engineer is telling us. Does the Town of Woodstock or the Woodstock Planning Board know whether this will be a "T" intersection with two driveways, or a road that bends with THREE driveways? Could somebody please fill me in? Thanks in advance.

Well, there is no resolution to that mess, but that's OK, we will give those with the ultimate plan in mind a little time to get back to us with some clarity.

Onto topic #2, the raison d'être of this blog, and a far more important issue than the access road.

First of all, Creighton Manning got my statement wrong. Maybe the transcriber did too. They quoted me as saying "fourth lane from the T-intersection" when in fact I said "fourth leg." Their report on the traffic situation down there referred to the "fourth leg" of T-intersections and so did I.

Now, the wonderful admission is this: "The section of Route 212 between Route 375 and Playhouse Lane is an example of poor access management." This is so exciting, I think I will write it again, this time in a more festive color: "The section of Route 212 between Route 375 and Playhouse Lane is an example of poor access management."

After that, there is a sentence fragment, which means that this letter was not poofread competently, and this fragment should be joined to the preceding sentence. This sentence fragment blames the Playhouse Plaza parking lot. However, this sentence fragment also calls the parking lot a "curb-cut" which is not accurate since there is no curb. There is a shoulder. Furthermore, the parking lot that is used is closer to 180 feet, since there is a division of parking areas.

The letter justifies not counting the cars in the Playhouse Plaza parking lot, in their traffic study, because "the standard analysis methods are not applicable." Yes, you read that right. Since the reality of the traffic could not be analyzed using the standard analysis methods, only the results of the standard analysis methods were presented. The traffic that did not "fit in" was simply ignored.

Actually, it's worse than that. The letter goes on to say that the cars that entered and exited the Playhouse Plaza parking lot were counted in the study, but they were counted as though they were through traffic. So what that means is if a car is driving away from town, goes by Playhouse Lane, then turns right into the parking lot, then later, backs out across two lanes of traffic and drives back into town, this movement was recorded as one eastbound trip and one westbound trip. However, the reality is that this particular car did a number of things other than simply driving by the intersection. First, it slowed traffic both times it crossed the intersection. Second, it made two turns in the intersection's functional area. Third, it backed across two lanes of traffic, causing a hazard both times. Fourth, the driver posed and experienced a risk if there was any car next to it that limited its visibility as it backed out into the moving traffic. Fifth, it messed with pedestrians on the shoulder because it did NOT actually simply drive by the intersection, but was engaged in the intersection in a very complicated way.

Now, given all of these differences between how Creighton Manning recorded the cars in the Playhouse Plaza parking lot and how the cars really affected the intersection, Creighton Manning can only say that "standard analysis methods" are not applicable to this real configuration of moving cars. Creighton Manning seems to be aware of the difference between methodology and reality, yet it chose consciously to abide by standard methodology, without ONE WORD in a footnote, or a letter, or any clue whatsoever that it treated the cars in the parking lot as cars that simply drove right through the intersection, as though there was no parking lot there at all.

This is how accidents happen. This is how people die. Engineering companies follow established patterns, and they rely on the patterns instead of thinking and looking.

I am now satisfied that Creighton Manning has admitted to recording the traffic movement differently than what is actually going on at that intersection. The fact that this letter seems to justify this difference is absurd. In the end, we care about safety. If the standard methodology does not cover something that is happening, and you can't figure out how to capture that something, then at least footnote the outlying feature for somebody else to look at. The bottom line, however, is that Creighton Manning was responsible for providing not only traffic, but safety conclusions about this intersection, and if they noticed that this intersection was dangerous, they sat on the information. And if they did not notice it, they are not very good traffic engineers.

But let us move on. There is more juicy prose to celebrate.

Next paragraph: "The conflicts created by the Playhouse Plaza curb-cut is a matter for the Town, NYSDOT, and the plaza owner to discuss."

See that? In their own analysis, Creighton Manning never pointed to or even admitted to any "conflicts" at all. They just ignored them, or perhaps saw them but chose not to disclose them. In any case, after I found the safety problem, its cause, the fact that it was omitted in Creighton Manning's study, and then documented three accidents in five weeks, all of a sudden there IS a conflict, according to Creighton Manning.

But now, it is not RUPCO's problem. Now, it is a problem for the The Town of Woodstock, The State Department of Transportation, and the owner of Playhouse Plaza.

Do you see what is happening here? Now, RUPCO is admitting that there is a problem with the access to its proposed project, but it is telling three other parties to get together to fix it. Why didn't RUPCO point to this problem earlier? Probably because it would have killed the project, back when there had been less invested in it. Probably because RUPCO was hoping that nobody would EVER notice the safety problem. But now that this hazard has been front page news in Woodstock Times, they can't really deny it any longer.

So, it now seems that this pivotal safety issue is no longer something that RUPCO, or Creighton Manning, or the Woodstock Planning Board has any power to solve. It seems that, according to Creighton Manning, the ball is in the town's court to get the other parties together to solve the safety problem at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212.

This letter further states: "Neither RUPCO, the Town, or the engineers are interested in creating an undue safety problems in the town." I wonder why and how this Creighton Manning engineer can speak for the Town of Woodstock. Why would he presume to speak for "the Town"?

Hmmmm. Who has been talking to whom?

This paragraph continues: "Hence the detailed review conducted for the Woodstock Commons project and the recommendations prepared to improve conditions."

Huh? Is there some detailed review that I have not seen? Or is this letter supposed to BE the detailed review? If this letter is the detailed review, then it basically boils down to this: we followed standard procedure rather than made an effort to actually represent what we SAW and what WAS happening in this intersection.

And a second "huh?" for the "recommendations prepared to improve conditions." Is that a separate document? I see not reference to an attachment anywhere. So, does that mean that telling the Planning Board to pass the problem to The Town of Woodstock, the NYSDOT and the Playhouse Plaza owner constitutes the entire sum of these recommendations to improve conditions? That would be shockingly misleading, but at this point, would not surprise me.

I await word from anybody as to how Creighton Manning knows the town's intention, and where their "recommendations prepared to improve conditions."

Thanks for reading this very long post. It's probably the most important and pivotal one to date.

There is SO much more to come.

35- RUPCO Responds Via Very Special Messenger Guy

Last night, I attended a Woodstock Planning Board meeting. RUPCO was not on the agenda. The agenda concerned the town parking lot on the Comeau property. I brought my video camera because I thought there might be a discussion of passive solar lighting, and this interested me for reasons having nothing to do with RUPCO. There was no such discussion, however, I did not know this, and I videotaped about an hour of the meeting anyway, in case the discussion started at any point during the discussion of the parking lot plans.

Instead of what I was there to tape, I taped something else of interest, concerning RUPCO. Everything of a visual nature that I am about to describe is captured on my video of this meeting. And the audio of the first thing Guy Kempe said to me, inches from the camera., is also on the tape.

During the taping, Guy Kempe, RUPCO's community relations person, enters the meeting room. That was about 43 minutes into the taping. He stands just to the side of my camera, and takes off his coat. He sits down in the audience at minute 44. At minute 70, he gets up and crosses in front of my camera, and stands in front of me and to the other side of where his seat is. At minute 71 of the tape, he crosses back again and starts to rummage through his briefcase. Later in minute 71, Guy Kempe approaches me and my camera. My camera was on top of a high filing cabinet, on a miniature tripod. My face was about one foot from the camera. Guy Kempe rolled up the three sheets of stapled paper that he had pulled from his briefcase, and stuffed them between the legs of my tripod. He whispered to me, "That's for you." Still in minute 71, Guy Kempe sits back down in his seat.

At this point, I read the papers he had placed in front of my face. One paper was the letter that I responded to yesterday, both in the blog and to the Planning Board, in a letter. Another sheet was a ridiculous letter concluding that there is no need for a left turn lane into Playhouse Lane from eastbound Route 212, but we already knew this would be the only possible conclusion. The third letter was from an engineer at Creighton Manning, and addresses directly, and with my name referenced, my comments from the Public Hearing on the site plan and special use permit, held January 14th.

At minute 74, I left my post next to my camera, and walked over to Guy Kempe, who is once again sitting in his audience seat. Guy Kempe and I discuss, on camera, for about three minutes, the contents of the papers that he had delivered to me moments earlier. At minute 77, I leave the frame, and at minute 78, I close the camera and leave the meeting room.

I am new to video editing, and am at this moment trying to extract some of the video footage from last night. When I do this successfully, I will post the relevant parts on this blog, but I don't know when that will be. For now, all I have is a very long and large video, which is too cumbersome and mostly uninteresting to foist on this readership.

But getting back to the substance of Guy Kempe's delivery:

Believe it or not, and by this time, if you have been reading my blog, you should believe that RUPCO has stepped in it big time. The more we bring the hazards of the Playhouse Lane & Rte 212 intersection to light, the more readily does RUPCO admit that there is something wrong there, and they actually think that just because this planned death trap is not on their "site," it will be fixed by other interested parties, simply because OTHERWISE, their plan is nice and safe.

I will save my line by line commentary for the next post. Suffice it to say, right here, that Guy Kempe's solution to the unsafe intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212 is to cut into the Playhouse Plaza parking lot, creating parking that is parallel to the road.

While this is a good idea, it also constitutes a taking of private property, which is illegal. So, in summary, RUPCO wants to take parking away from viable businesses that depend on their parking spaces, in order to subsidize their project.

If the town does come in and condemn this parking lot, and then pay the businesses a fair amount for reducing their parking lot by about 50% (my rough estimate,) considering that virtually all of the business at this place is drive in business, this limits the business by half, and payment for that half of business, every year the business is in business is a huge burden on the town. So, in effect, RUPCO is assuming that the town will somehow manage to destroy legal business in Woodstock, at the taxpayer's expense, so that RUPCO can build affordable housing and then have its for profit, wholly owned subsidiary make money from it.

Wake up, Town of Woodstock.

Stay tuned. Images of the engineering letter and line by line commentary are coming up later today, or maybe tomorrow.

34- RUPCO Tap Dance

Today in my email, I received a copy of a letter sent to the Woodstock Planning Board addressing comments that I made at the January 14 Public hearing.

First, I will show you my response, which I am bringing over to the Planning Board this afternoon. It's in blue. After that, if you have the stomach for it, read the RUPCO lawyer's greasy fare. That one's in green.


Robin Segal, “Contiguous Neighbor”
Evergreen Lane
Woodstock, NY 12498


Feb. 4, 2010



Town of Woodstock Planning Board
Mr. Paul Shultis, Jr., Chairman
Town Offices, 45 Comeau Drive
Woodstock, NY 12498


Re: Woodstock Commons: Ulster County Roadway Specifications and Traffic




Dear Paul and Board Members:

A memo from Michael Moriello to the Woodstock Planning Board, dated January 22, 2010, and refuting my comments to the Board during the Jan. 14, 2010 public hearing on the site plan and special use permit for Woodstock Commons, has come to my attention.

This memo attempts to mislead you from both my message, and the contents of the document that I cited at the public hearing.

Mr. Moriello asserts that I claim that “somehow the 2003, ‘Access Management Guidelines’ for Ulster County Roadways should apply to the intersection of the local Town of Woodstock Roadways, Playhouse Lane and White’s Lane.

This statement is incorrect. First of all, the Access Management guideline document that I have read over and over again NEVER asserts that it is “for Ulster County Roadways,” as Mr. Moriello would like you to believe. It is a document prepared FOR the Ulster County Transportation Plan, but it is not limited to Ulster County Roadways. Mr. Moriello either tried to mislead you, or failed to glean the correct meaning from the relevant document.

The Access Management Guidelines specifically state that they are a collection of guidelines that include safety guidelines, and that they are for use in not ONLY county roadways, but MANY types of roadways segments, including:
“Most Village and City Streets.”

The Access Management Guidelines are, in part, safety guidelines. They might not be legally binding, but they are not legally binding for county or state roads either. Mr. Moriello would have you believe that town roads have different safety standards, but if you take a look at the guidelines, you will see that the safety standards are universal, and that no divisions or legalistic language is used to give RUPCO an out because it cites that only two town roads will be involved.

In addition to the access road, there is the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212, which certainly DOES involve a road that is larger than a county road. So, if in fact there is a differentiation of safety standards made outside of this document, thank you to Mr. Moriello for alerting us to it. If the project access road intersection does not count, according to him, but larger classified roads do, then he just backhandedly admitted that the access management guidelines ARE intended for that very dangerous intersection.

These guidelines may not be legally binding, but they will hold a lot of weight in court when the Town of Woodstock gets sued after an accident, either at Playhouse Lane & the new access road, or at Playhouse Lane & Route 212. It does not take a math whiz to figure out that where there are now accidents, and if you send more cars through that place, and if accidents then increase, that a causal correlation exists. Any jury will see this causality plain as day.

Mr. Moriello goes on to write that three separate traffic engineers have studied and analyzed the Woodstock Commons Site Development Plans and attendant traffic issues. However, in reading the FEIS for this project, I was only able to find one direction by RUPCO, to study one aspect of the new access road site, and that aspect was line of sight. It had nothing to do with driveways.

I would like to know which other two traffic engineers studied and analyzed the Woodstock Commons Site Development Plans and attendant traffic issues for the plans featuring the revised access road. I could not find anything of the kind, except for one other firm measuring line of sight from the new access road, but that hardly amounts to a study and analysis of all of the attendant traffic issues. Does Mr. Moriello consider line of sight to be the only attendant traffic issue that is relevant? Also, I would like to know if Mr. Moriello considers the traffic and the three recent accidents at the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Route 212 to be “attendant” traffic issues. Since the vast majority of the traffic going into the project will go through that intersection, it seems pretty much “attendant” to me.

As for none of the three agencies agreeing with my characterization of the Creighton Manning Traffic Studies as “selective reasoning,” that might be because no traffic engineer was asked to analyze access management for the project. Traffic engineers do what you ask them to do. When the access road was moved, one civil engineering firm was asked to look at the line of sight. I have no problem with the line of sight at the new access road. However, there is more to the new location than line of sight, and if you do not ask a firm to analyze something, they cannot disagree with you.

I could go on and on about this legalistic and misleadingly worded garbage that Mr. Moriello is throwing at you, but by this point, either you see what is happening to you, or you don’t.

[signed: RSegal]

The following is an imperfect copy of the RUPCO legal letter (as regards signatures, and other images, since I had to import it as a text document,) but the substance is there intact.)

RISELEY & MORIELLO
AITORNEYS AT I.AW
111 Green Street


Tel: (E45) 33E-6603

Post Offie Box 4465

Richard F. RIseleY

Fa:<: (845) 340-1614 Kingsoon, New York 12402 Michael A. Morhllo 'January 22, 2010 Town of Woodstock Planning Board Mr. Paul Shultis, ,Jr., Chairman Town Offices, 45 Comeau Drive Woodstock, New York 12498 RE: ?{oodstock Commons: Ulster County Roadway Specifications and Traffic Dear Paul-and Board Members: This is offered in response to the claim made by Ms. Robin Segal that somehow the 2003, "Access Management Guidelines" for Ulster County Roadways should apply to the intersection of the local Town of Woodstock Roadways, Playhouse Lane and White's Lane. Town roadways and county roadways have completely different jurisdictional predicates. The town roads in Woodstock are governed under the Town of Woodstock Code, while county roads are governed pursuant to applicable provisions of the New York State Highway Law. With further respect to the specific call for the Town of Woodstock Planning Board to apply county access guidelines, the same have no applicability; in that requirements for obtaining Ulster County aid for construction, improvements and maintenance of the ' town roadways at issue have not, been undertaken by the Town of lr]oodstock. Morris v. CahiII , 96 ADZd 88 (3'd Dept, L9B3) . See a]so, Sections 131-k and 195 of the New York State Highway Law. The Woodstock Commons Site Development Plans and at.tendant traffic issues have been studj.ed and analyzed by three (3) separate traffii engineers, the Town of Woodstock Highway Superintendent, the Town of Woodstock Building Inspector, the Town of Woodstock Fire Chief , the County of Ulster Planning Board: and the Ne.w Yoq,k State Department of Transportation. ,. '-.,, 0b Otoz e €aJ((lgft>

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33- The ABC's of the letter T

Although it might seem silly, I would like to explore the letter T, specifically the meaning of a "T intersection." When this expression is used in Creighton Manning's traffic study, the "T" is always upper case. Creighton Manning refers to the "fourth leg" of the "T" but the only T that has a fourth leg is a lower case "t".

Do you think Creighton Manning saw Playhouse and 212 as a "T" but 375 and 212 as a "t"? Well, if they did, they should have specified this difference, since their car counts were completely in line with this difference of letter shape interpretation. It's a pretty weak argument, though. I hope they have another one in mind...

Do you think this discussion is silly? I do too. However, it was RUPCO's Guy Kempe who asked George Pattison at the Woodstock Times: by what standard am I qualified to judge this traffic study?

Well, here is another part of the answer, Guy: I have authored eleven alphabet books. I have studied the shape of letters, upper case and lower case, in different fonts and different colors. My books are about cities, as well, meaning that I have observed and photographed thousands of scenes, including "T is for traffic cop" and "I is for intersection."

See here: