Residents of three villages share input at transportation safety meetings

The Town of Warwick Transportation Safety Action Plan Committee held three open houses in the villages of Greenwood Lake, Florida and Warwick to inform the public of the Safety Action Plan and to gather input. Several residents attended the meetings to provide feedback and ask questions about the plan.

The Safety Action Plan is a document that identifies issues, recommends strategies and intends to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes throughout the town of Warwick. The plan is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program, which provides grant funding to towns across the country in order to help towns establish a plan to reduce accidents and traffic. The town of Warwick has already passed legislation that commits reducing fatal and serious crashes to zero by 2050, and the Safety Action Plan has become a central part of the Slow Down Warwick Campaign.

“We’re going to develop a priority network,” said Zach Broat of Creighton Manning. “The plan will recommend priority locations in the whole town to direct planning and funding towards those most dangerous places.”

The committee meetings began with comments from each of the respective villages’ mayors, and then transitioned into short presentations by Michael Amabile and Broat, who are partners on the project. Dedicated to an “open house” style rather than a public hearing format, the TSAP Committee set up posters around the meeting spaces where residents could learn about the project and ask the team questions. Posters included information such as crash data for each town and potential mitigation strategies for the project.

“I’m glad that all the villages went with the town and made it a true town-wide thing where we can feed off each other’s ideas,” said Greenwood Lake Mayor Thomas Howley about the safety plan. “When it’s all said and done, I think it’s going to be good for the whole town.”

Data analyses and public input

Data-driven analyses of crash history drive the suggestions of potential recommended new projects, such as safer crossings, new sidewalks and improved pedestrian infrastructure. For the purposes of the plan, the focus is on using reported crashes that resulted in serious injuries or fatalities. According to the NYS CLEAR database, there were 317 total crashes town-wide from 2020-2024, with 74 of them resulting in serious injuries and four of them involving fatalities. The main contributing factor of the reported crashes was driver inattention, according to the committee.

A major focus of the plan relies on public input. A survey was sent out across the three villages in order to gain insight into where residents think that improvements to infrastructure could be made. The survey has garnered close to 200 responses, and will remain open until March 15. According to the survey, 66 percent of respondents indicated that speeding was a prominent safety issue across the town. Other safety issues reported in the survey included a lack of pedestrian infrastructure and pedestrian safety.

At each of the meetings, residents were offered paper copies of the survey and could mark locations on maps where they believed changes could be helpful. Many residents asked questions to the committee, who were taking in feedback and marking down suggestions. A recurring concern was the worry that if a concern was about a state road that nothing could be done for the issue.

“The goal of the plan is to make the case that these improvements are needed,” said Amabile. “If a case can be made that an improvement the village wants on a state road is possible and can be done, then the next step is to define that project, identify the funding for it, get it into the plan and then hopefully it can happen.”

“The more that we put forward these requests, the more likely they are to be heard,” said Foster.

Demonstration projects

Part of the campaign includes the use of local artists in the community to create “demonstration projects”, which is the implementation of artwork on village roads and intersections in an effort to capture driver attention and slow down drivers.

“One of the experiments is creating what we are calling ‘gateways’ so that it’s very visually obvious that they’ve entered a new zone and that they need to be acting differently,” said Village of Warwick Trustee Carly Foster.

These temporary installations are set to be put at traffic “hotspots” of the village of Warwick, where data will be collected on the impact that the project has on traffic flow. The first intended spots for these projects are the Veteran’s Memorial Park and the intersection between Galloway Road and Forester Ave.

“We have the speeds and the crash rates at the locations now, and then we would install them, and then monitor the speeds and crashes at those locations when they’re there to see if anything changes, then eventually they will be removed,” said Amabile.

Foster emphasized that while they are going to focus on concrete infrastructure improvements, having additional artistic improvements that are appealing visually will have benefits for the town.

“You can think about beautification at the same time you think about safety, because all of those things together improve quality of life,” said Foster.