Randall Street: Florida's half mile highway to hell

| 19 Mar 2018 | 11:45

    The Warwick Advertiser ran a story with picture about a house destroyed on Randall Street in Florida, N.Y. Randall Street is a New York State highway, subject to inaction by bureaucracy. It gets plowed.
    The north bound lane starts with a rough patch from the water main
    installation of a few years ago. Most of the way one weaves back and
    forth dodging the sunken man holes which were placed too low when the
    Beazer subdivision sewer line went in a few more years ago.
    Now that it is pothole season, dodging is impossible because the pot holes are worse than the man holes. It ends at a failed bridge at the village line that narrows the road into a final bottle neck that has collapsing safety barriers that have been collapsed many times from collisions in recent years.
    The truck that destroyed the house bounced off the bridge, over
    corrected and hit the house.
    The south bound lane used to be "OK" but it now is starting to suffer from sink holes. When the water main was put in, it was run just off the right of the south bound lane but the connections to homes across the road were made in the road.
    All those connections are now starting to sink.
    It would not surprise me if someone coming down the southbound lane
    swerves away from a weaver in the northbound lane and then gets caught by one of the sink holes and bounces off the guard rail into next oncoming swerving weaver.
    The road has been graced with a "narrow bridge" sign that is adorned with reflective tape.
    The road should have billboards proclaiming "Rough Road." I mean 20 by 40 footers.
    It should have a severely delimited speed of say 20 MPH; 15
    would be better.
    It should have the narrow gap at the failed bridge placed into an alternating traffic mode with temporary traffic lights.
    Hey, there used to be a set protecting the traffic on Route 6 near the new power plant while the bridge over I-84 was replaced. Maybe the village of Florida could borrow them from the State?
    Mr. Mayor, the truck destroyed a house.
    Mr. Supervisor. people will die here.
    Mr. Governor, could we borrow some lights?
    Of course, fixing the bridge and the road would be preferable but who knows when that will happen?
    Yours truly,
    H. Craig Hamling
    Florida