The Policy Is The Policy (NYSDOT Varna Freese Road bridge remix 1.0)
Channel: Simon St.Laurent
Date: 2022-02-06

"The policy is the policy."  "Who makes the policy?" "DOT."

On January 15, 2020, the Town of Dryden held a public information meeting to tell residents what the New York State Department of Transportation had in mind for replacing the one-lane Freese Road bridge.  Despite connecting a busy intersection with bad sightlines to an immediate set of difficult curves and a hill, both NYSDOT and the Town were, at that point, pushing for a two-lane bridge.  It did not go so well.  (Recording at https://livingindryden.org/audio/bridgeMeetingLouder011520b.mp3 )

Almost two years later, the bridge closed following a failed inspection after major rainstorms.  In theory there is now a much better plan, thanks in part to public input at this meeting. That would replace the bridge with a new one-lane bridge and ship the old bridge just up the road to Groton, where it was originally made.  If only highway cultures hadn't fallen into the "we must always make things bigger" trap, we might have an open bridge now.  Even in the better plan, we'll probably be stuck with new and pointless traffic signals on the bridge when we get it.

The exchange at the heart of this piece starts at about 41:00 in the original recording. It is, unfortunately, an excellent summary of how the entire meeting went.

I took all the photos used in this video and recorded all the meeting and traffic sounds.  (Traffic sounds are cars going over the bridge in October 2021.)  I composed and assembled the music, borrowing a phrase from Joseph Haydn's Surprise Symphony No. 94 (1791).