Notice anything different about this street corner?
Walking the length of Warren Street, from Front to Worth, every corner curb is festooned with one or more of the following:
- Street signs;
- Stop signs;
- Stop lights;
- Light poles;
- Telephone poles;
- Electrical boxes;
- Garbage cans;
- Dog warnings;
- Hydrants;
- Meters; and
- Trees.
Some, like the southwest corner of 5th and Warren, feature a half-dozen or more obstructions.
But out of some 48 corners on Warren Street, one solitary curb is bare: the southeast corner at Park Place. Why?
The reason is simple: The City gave up trying to put anything there, because they always get demolished by big trucks whose drivers have strayed off the designated truck route. Every sign, tree, can, or other vertical object placed at that corner gets knocked down, sooner or later. Usually sooner.
It was this exact corner which inspired various politicos in 1999-2000 to form an ad hoc Truck Route Task Force. Sometime Alderman Dean Melino had a shop called Ecclectables just around this corner, and he was tired of tractor trailers illegally coming down Warren Street from Worth Avenue or Prospect, then trying to negotiate this tight turn. Either they’d take down a sign or tree, or cross into the oncoming lane, or even wind up in the parking areas along the Park, or all three.
Melino was locked in a second election campaign with then-Hudson resident (now Greenport Supervisor) John Porreca, and both worked to out-do each other in calling for (A) more police enforcement of existing truck rules, (B) better signage designating the truck routes, and (C) ideally, moving the truck route of Hudson entirely. The Task Force was formed by then-Assemblyman Patrick Manning with other Republicans and various citizens, including myself, to make meaningful progress on the issue, rather than merely complaining about it.
For several weeks, I lunched daily in a booth in the front the Diner, counting how many trucks were illegally using upper Warren and Park Place. Though I saw dozens of trucks per session, not once did I see one stopped by the Hudson police for being off the route. Manning and I also staked out this corner for an afternoon, hailing truckers who tried to make the turn to interview them: Why are you here? Where are you headed? How do you feel about having to drive through Hudson, with its stop signs, cyclist, kids playing in the street, tight turns, etc. (Without exception, the truckers said they’d rather take a longer but speedier route than have to negotiate Hudson’s stop-and-go urban traffic and pedestrian hazards.)
But after productive meetings with the DOT, with whom we mapped out alternative routes, and who clearly stated that the route could be removed from Hudson, County leaders seized control of the effort, removed all the
All this history is relevant again now because Linda Mussmann and various politicians apparently held a non-public meeting recently about the truck route issue. And what did they reportedly conclude? That this very same problematic corner at Warren and Park Place should become the new the ground zero of Hudson’s truck route.
Yep, the same corner that big trucks can’t get around without either knocking something over, or veering into the opposite lanes, or both.
Interestingly enough, Mussmann refused to participate in the late 90s Task Force, because of her aversion to Manning and other members. Meanwhile, now that he’s Greenport Supervisor, my friend John Porreca evidently is opposed to the route including more Greenport miles, even though a high percentage of the trucks are destined for that town’s big box shopping centers. To add to the fun, 5th Ward Supervisor Rick Scalera now is posturing that something must be done to move the route, though he did not lift a finger to do so in all his years as Mayor.
(Does some politician have a feud with a resident or business in the 700 or 800 block, causing them to be targeted repeatedly? This year has also featured a push to put a homeless shelter in the middle of these blocks, which have seen a great deal of positive business and real estate movement lately. Like the siting of halfway housing in the middle of North 5th Street just as it was showing signs of life in the late 90s—a move which effectively blocked the spread of business off Warren Street—it often seems like City Hall wants to slow down progress driven by independent people and businesses.)
Hudson sometimes seems to exist solely to illustrate two sayings that are so well-known by now that they have achieved cliché status. Namely: Santayana’s nostrum that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” plus Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To move the truck route to arguably the most problematic corner in town would represent both a failure to learn from the past, and an insane exercise in futility.
More background on this long-running issue is to come, including some research on the genesis of this truck route several decades ago.
