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.