WASHINGTON – Work will begin soon on a series of highway safety improvements at the four-way intersection nearest to the Western New York National Cemetery in Pembroke – but the work didn’t start soon enough to prevent two more crashes at the crash-prone crossing in the past three months.
This month, the State Department of Transportation will install larger stop signs on Indian Falls Road at the intersection of Route 77, including a placard that says: “CROSS TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP.” Also this summer, the state will install larger “INTERSECTION” signs on Route 77, a spokesman for the state DOT said last week.
Then, by early fall, DOT will eliminate the passing zones on Route 77 at the Indian Falls Road intersection, install rumble strips on Route 77 and add “STOP” pavement markings on Indian Falls Road.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will seek bids in September for work to be done by December on sign-mounted flashing warning signals on both roadways, a VA spokesman confirmed.
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Neither agency would say how much those changes will cost.
The changes stem from a traffic study the two agencies released in June, nine months after two Lockport veterans – Arnold Herdendorf and Christopher Rowell – were killed in a crash at the intersection. Both the veterans cemetery’s manager and the planner leading development of the facility had raised concerns about visibility issues at the intersection and pressed for safety improvements more than a year before that fatal crash, only to be ignored and reprimanded by the VA for their push for safety.
Local veterans advocate Patrick W. Welch said he was glad to see safety improvements at the intersection, adding that the state and the VA should have made changes much sooner.
“One of the things I’m most upset about is that they really knew this years ago, and they took no action and now we’ve lost lives and had other accidents,” he said.
Those other accidents occurred on May 24 and July 15. Both of those crashes occurred on the opposite side of the four-way intersection where the two Lockport veterans were killed: on Gabbey Road, which becomes Indian Falls Road on the east side of that intersection.
In the first of the two crashes, a man driving a pickup truck stopped at the stop sign on Gabbey Road, then proceeded through the intersection only to collide with a vehicle heading north on Route 77. According to a report from the Genesee County Sheriff’s office, the man told officers that he didn’t see the vehicle that hit him, whose driver suffered minor cuts on her arms in the crash.
Then on July 15, according to a sheriff’s report, a nearly identical accident happened. A veteran involved in that crash was uninjured, but a woman in the other vehicle in the collision was sent to the hospital with minor injuries.
With accidents at the intersection occurring regularly over the years, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, and some others pressed for a roundabout to be installed at the intersection. But that proposal prompted some opposition from the community.
“The VA received 90 responses to its traffic analysis and safety study, which did not demonstrate overwhelming public support for the roundabout,” said Joseph Morrissey, a state DOT spokesman. “While there are no current plans to construct a roundabout at this intersection, NYSDOT will continue to monitor the intersection’s safety and work with the VA and local stakeholders as needed to implement traffic enhancements at the intersection.”
Welch said he and other veterans advocates will continue to monitor what’s happening at the intersection as well. He said he’s not certain that a…
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