The Complex Roads of Poughkeepsie
The City of Poughkeepsie has an undoubtedly rich history. Having gone through a series of phases — from the whaling and shipping trades in the mid-1800’s to the arrival of IBM in the mid-1900’s — the city has now ultimately reached a point where it is no longer a major industrial hub.
According to a presentation called “It Takes a Planner to Kill a City” by Josh Simmons at SUNY New Paltz, Poughkeepsie entered a period of urban renewal in the 1960’s. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” provided federal funds to rebuild infrastructure.
Simmons referred to Poughkeepsie’s urban renewal as a failure for many reasons — one of which was the failure to build an effective road system. And the city still hasn’t recovered.
For newcomers, Poughkeepsie’s roads are exceptionally confusing to navigate. With so many seemingly scattered one-way streets, high-speed arterial highways cutting through the city and even an intersection that allows a left turn on red, it is overwhelming for those unfamiliar with the area.
Much of that confusion directly stems from the so-called urban renewal in Poughkeepsie, and its failure has had long-lasting effects in preventing the modern-day city from progressing.
“One of the most important aspects of any community is the ability to move about, going from point A to point B, to get places safely and efficiently,” City of Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison said. “Each community has its own set of circumstances and challenges: how the roads may be laid out, the condition that they are in.”
Rolison emphasized that a key challenge in most cities today (including Poughkeepsie) is their ability to fix existing infrastructure.
“It’s not like cities are creating new roads, those days have kind of come and gone for the most part,” Rolison said. “We may be re-aligning, going from one-way to two-way [roads], but the actual physical construction of new streets — other than when there is construction and you need to do that — most of it is where it is and it’s probably not going away.”
Rolison explained that the city must work within the existing structure. In addition to monitoring the city’s parking situation, professional traffic engineers have been brought in to study traffic flows and the amount of cars on the street, and a comprehensive study is actually underway in the downtown area because of heavy traffic.
One particularly traffic-heavy area in the city is Main Street. In 1974, the existing Main Street at the time was transformed into an outdoor pedestrian mall. It cost $4 million to build — all of which was paid for with federal funds — and was eventually torn down completely because businesses were flocking away from the City and into the suburban areas. The mall area was then re-established as Main Street.
But the most problematic traffic situation (for many reasons) has to do with the City’s arterials: the Route 9 North-South and the Route 44/55 East-West arterials.
Years ago, Route 9 used to veer off onto South Avenue (accessible today by the first exit on the right after passing Holiday Inn Express northbound), it went up to Market St. and it passed right by City Hall. Then it followed Washington Street along and opened up where Marist College is.
“The reason the North-South arterials were built was to alleviate congestion,” Rolison said. “I have a vague remembrance as a kid growing up, when Route 9 went through the city and they were building the arterial highway. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of primo real estate and really cool buildings and factories and all these things that were torn down that would have been re-used somehow over the years.
“I don’t know what the solution was back then and I don’t necessarily know what it would be right now because you had Route 9 going through a major city and a major commercial corridor. Back then all the activity was in the city. You didn’t have shopping malls, you didn’t even have plazas at that point.”
The introduction of the North-South arterials cut off part of the City from the waterfront; before that, streets went right down to the water. Rolison pondered what it would be like if that were still the case.
“Imagine how neat that would be if those streets still existed, with all the types of things that would be going on there,” Rolison said. “Some cities have that — some cities didn’t have arterials that had to go through their communities.
“The waterfront wasn’t valuable back then, people didn’t go to the water. We know now that it would be designed somewhat differently, and however that would be, I don’t know.”
As for the East-West arterials, they link the Mid-Hudson Bridge to Routes 44 and 55 by forming a ring around the City of Poughkeepsie, with the westbound arterial on the north end and the eastbound on the south end. Just like the North-South arterials cut off the city from the waterfront, though, the East-West arterials took out a significant amount of properties.
“I remember that vividly because that was in the mid-70’s where they cut right through the City of Poughkeepsie,” Rolison said. “They took houses and buildings — I don’t know if they did eminent domain, I don’t know how they did it, they probably bought people out — and then they constructed these three-lane, super high-speedways that ripped you right through the City of Poughkeepsie… the next thing you know, you’re on the bridge heading across the river, or you’re going to go north or south on Route 9.
“Back then, that was the thing — to get from point A to point B the fastest way. It assisted in the decline of the city because people were forced off of Main Street onto these three-lane arterials — which are unsafe. They hurt commerce because now you didn’t have to go down Main St. and you were able to get from one end of the city to the other without really touching any of the neighborhoods or touching the commercial business district.”
According to Simmons’ presentation, the arterials “displaced 48 owners, 59 tenants, and 26 businesses.” Not only did their construction have a negative effect on the surrounding areas, it also created safety issues that have yet to be mended.
“When they designed the arterial, the intersection with the bridge and Route 44/55 is completely contrary to what should have been done,” Rolison said. “So those areas with the east ramps on and off are the highest accident location. We have tow truck drivers that just sit down there waiting for it to happen. Most of them are rear-end accidents because most of the cars are going fast and then someone goes a little bit and stops, so they are hit from behind.
“I don’t even know what the numbers are but I know they’re astronomical. Very rarely does anybody get hurt because they are just taps, but sometimes they’re tow-able. It’s going South, it’s going North. You’re trying to merge out and you can’t do that, and next thing you know — boom.”
Compared to other Lower Hudson Region communities, Poughkeepsie has the highest rate of fatal and injury crashes. The city ranks second over a three-year span, just behind the town. The arterials play a major role in this unfortunate statistic, especially considering that they are the City’s only roads with speed limits over 30 mph.
In addition to providing traffic relief, the arterials were also built in conjunction with the growth of IBM at the time. Though the corporation existed mostly just outside the City of Poughkeepsie, they were expanding into the City when the arterials were being constructed.
“They were expanding out route 55 because IBM was out there,” City of Poughkeepsie Commissioner of Public Works Chris Gent said. “All that three-lane highway, we really don’t need it now. They thought IBM was going to be this major hub so they put all these roads to get to places that you don’t really need to get to anymore.”
When moving out of the city and into the suburbans became a popular trend and IBM began to downsize, it not only hurt the region but it made some portions of the arterial highways almost useless. The roads meant for facilitating traffic to the now dormant areas that IBM used to occupy serve as traffic nightmares today — they are unnecessary and they are dangerous, especially since motorists tend to drive way too fast.
“It’s a long-term project to make permanent changes to the arterials and it’s all about traffic calming, it’s all about slowing people down,” City of Poughkeepsie Community Development Coordinator Paul Hesse said. “These streets were designed for speed. They are probably twelve foot-wide lanes and people will drive as fast as they feel comfortable driving. So despite the fact that it’s a 30-mph speed limit, people are going 60 mph.
“If we put that street on a road diet and maybe take a whole drive lane and maybe narrow those lanes a little bit, people will slow down because they won’t feel comfortable driving as fast anymore. You change a little bit of the signal timing, now you’re really starting to slow traffic down and now you’re not having to do the big capital cost of redoing the curb work and the hard infrastructure work. You can use temporary materials to do these things. Cities are doing it all over the country.”
Hesse said the City took a whole lane away using orange cones on Market Street in October. It was a traffic calming demonstration to see how it would impact traffic flow. But that was on a local level, where the City can independently do what they feel is necessary; in order to see tangible change on the arterial highways, it gets a bit more complicated.
“At the end of the day we have to work with our partners at the New York State DOT (Department of Transportation) because they’re the ones who control the roads,” Hesse said. “This becomes a state policy thing — it’s not just our local guys here. There needs to be a philosophy change at New York State DOT because they’re one of the biggest inhibitors for communities like us, for getting something like this done.”
The City of Poughkeepsie is part of an ad hoc group called Highways to Boulevards organized by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a non-profit organization that strives to reduce car dependency in the tri-state region. Hesse described it as being like “a union of like-minded cities that are beginning to rethink their urban highways.”
“We’re talking like Syracuse that’s got I-81 cutting right through the middle of it, Rochester with I-390… Buffalo is also thinking about this, Albany’s thinking about it, New York City with the Sheridan Expressway,” Hesse said. “[New York Governor] Cuomo has a big plan for the Sheridan Expressway. He wants to tear it down because now it’s cutting out the Bronx, it’s cutting off a neighborhood from the waterfront [at the] Bronx River.
“We’re not the only community — we’re a small one compared to some of these other ones but we’re not the only ones.”
Hesse explained that they are not looking to make changes to interstate highways, just state-controlled roads. With interstate highways, it is even more difficult to get something done because the Federal government has to get involved. But with the state-controlled roads, he believes the City can get things done.
“This is not going to happen tomorrow,” Hesse said. “This is decades of work that it’s going to take. Rochester is the only city in New York State that I’m aware of that has actually started to take down what’s called the Inner Loop in Rochester. They started to take down one part of it. The planning for that — they’ve been working on that for 20 years. It takes a long time.”
The overall future of Poughkeepsie in the eyes of its leading politicians and planners actually has a lot to do with the improvement of all of its streets.
“If we were able to take those arterials and shrink them down to one lane or one-and-a-half lane, one lane with a turning lane, we could bring the curbing out, the sidewalks out,” Rolison said. “We could beautify it, there would be separation of the houses so they’re not really on the street.”
“We often say that we should advocate doing it ‘from this block to this block’ and maybe it will have this funneling effect where as you get closer to downtown, the narrower it gets. That will facilitate the walk-ability and the bike-ability.”
Rolison said cities are being encouraged to do things to increase foot and bike traffic. Getting people out of cars alleviates environmental concerns and in turn, cities try to provide better and efficient transit systems.
“People are moving back into cities for all the cool reasons,” Rolison said. “They want to go to things — they want to walk to things, they want to take a bus to things, they want to ride a bike to things. You can’t do that on the arterials.”
But the availability of several alternative methods of transportation is not the only issue at play. According to Rolison, a major concern for the city is its visual aesthetic.
Garbage is often strewn about on streets, which makes garbage collection an issue as well as cleanliness.
“Visually, it is unfortunate,” Rolison said. “We are trying to improve the streets of the City of Poughkeepsie and to make them more appealing to people.”
Though they do not have the financial capability to do so immediately (it is estimated it will take $2 million to complete), the city would also like to improve its sidewalks — not only to improve walk-ability but also so they can increase the amount of trees lining the streets.
“The benefits of having trees outweigh the costs,” Hesse said. “The environmental benefits, the property values, the carbon footprint — everything.”
The inclusion of trees is just one factor, though.
“We have to take care of our streets, and when I say streets I mean the whole thing — I mean sidewalks, the road bed, the street trees and the street lighting,” Hesse said. “If we take care of and invest in those things, the private sector will follow. It should be our job and our mission to make it as attractive of a place as possible for people to move to and for businesses to move to.
“We want businesses to thrive and we want people to be happy they live here. We want to raise that quality of life and it’s all about the public realm. Cities that are successful have a great public realm, great streets, great parks and parklets.”
Clean, modernized streets are essential to any city’s growth, and that’s been a major issue for Poughkeepsie.
“On an unkempt street and a dimly lit street, if someone sees that there are a bunch of guys over there, they may think ‘they must be drug dealers,’” Rolison said. “They may be drug dealers but they may not be drug dealers, or they may be bad guys but they may not be bad guys. That is a big-time problem that we have in the city. You may not come back to the city period.”
Though Rolison ensured that petty crimes like muggings do not happen often in Poughkeepsie anymore, the City still wants to combat this issue of people feeling unsafe, so they are upgrading its lighting.
“We have a new LED lighting program going on city-wide,” Rolison said. “People are just thrilled with the amount of light that they throw when properly displayed and positioned in the Central Business District because you want to lighten it up.”
“The cameras can also see better with the LED lights,” Gent said. “So there are a lot of good reasons to put up LED lights.”
In keeping with the trend of getting people out of their cars and onto the streets, the mayor also hopes this lighting will help get people to stay a while, rather than do what they have to do at a single location and leave immediately afterward.
“There was this thing — park, eat and then walk around,” Rolison said. “What we had was people parking, eating and then leaving. We want people to park, eat, stroll and explore more than that one location you go into. Walk up the block a little bit, go down and check out that intersection; go down and see if you can see the river from that spot. You can do it, but if you’re not getting out of your car, that’s not helping the city.
“When I drive through a community, I’m always struck by the visual aspect of it. And so you’re like ‘wow, that’s a pretty cool street, I think I’m going to go into that joint right there because I want to park here and get out and walk around.’”
So what is the ideal future for Poughkeepsie’s roads?
“Personally, if there’s something we could change tomorrow, it would be the speed on the arterials in the short-term,” Rolison said. “Before you do any real sort of capital construction and changing and re-configuring, we need to start slowing people down.
“Long-term is making the arterials pedestrian-friendly, safer to cross, improve the bikeability aspects of it, creating more green space along the arterials with set-backs for the houses. I think that would improve the quality of life for the people that live on that section. And it would probably change the dynamic of people who were buying those houses and renting them out and not really doing much with them.”
“It’s all about introducing a level of complexity to our street grid and giving people options to get places,” Hesse said. “Right now we funnel everybody in to a few streets to get from A to B. At the time, I’m sure the traffic engineers were thinking ‘we have a congestion problem, we have to make those streets wider, we have to make more lanes.’
“There is something called induced demand — if you have a traffic problem and you open up and create another lane, more traffic comes there. If you narrow your streets and take away a lane, traffic disperses. Traffic will find a way, just like water. You need to open up those opportunities, you have to get rid of the one-way roads and give people multiple ways to get from A to B.”
As Rolison, Hesse and Gent all indicated, roads are critical to a city’s overall success. It may take decades, but the City of Poughkeepsie’s complex road system will eventually be fixed, and hopefully that will lend itself to the kind of urban renewal it failed to complete years ago.
