Letters-to-the-Editor & Commentary

Traffic Armageddon is coming to Irvington if sensible minds don’t prevail.

Published 2 years ago2y ago • Bookmarks: 13

October 18, 2022

To the Editor:

Proposed and future high-density apartment complexes on 76 and 88 North Broadway—now under discussion—could include up to 300 permanently housed cars for those residential properties combined. Most of those cars would be leaving at rush hour in the morning, and returning at rush hour in the evening. Anybody struggling to drive through this corridor today appreciates how awful the traffic already is. Imagine what an armada of 300 additional vehicles would do. Then add Amazon Prime deliveries; the daily in-and-out of school buses; mail, refuse and other trucks; and visitors. You don’t need a PhD in engineering (or arithmetic) to conclude that the result would be a nightmare—and irreversible—if high-density projects of any kind are permitted.

A diverse group of us, “Irvington Neighbors Against Traffic,” has now organized and retained counsel to maintain traffic sanity. We invite others to join our group. Whatever individuals may think about such subjective matters as green space or sight lines or aesthetics, we believe nobody favors even more traffic congestion—or the noise, pollution, or increased danger to students, pedestrians and bicyclists that inevitably come with it.

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There may be some who claim our cause is really about blocking affordable housing. The claim is false and offensive. There are worthy affordable-housing alternatives in Irvington: development on sites where traffic doesn’t flood directly onto Broadway; retrofitting pre-existing higher-density complexes; and increasing the mandatory affordable component of new projects. Those are just a few approaches, and other creative municipalities across the country use them. But the goal of affordability does not justify the irrevocable ruination of the busiest traffic stretch of our Village. Our representatives ought now confront that fact.

David A. Kaplan

Irvington, NY

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