Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - Congressman Bill Higgins alongside Assemblyman Bill Conrad and City of Tonawanda Mayor John White announced Thursday morning a 1.2 million dollar project coming to Tonawanda to aid in preventing trucks from hitting the low CSX bridge on Young Street.
"We've seen it happen again and again," said Congressman Higgins. "A high profile truck travels down Young Street and despite new signage and restrictions, it hits this bridge. Since the year 2000, there have been a total of 64 truck hits at the CSX rail bridge creating safety issues for the community, and traffic headaches for the travelers."
In 2021 alone, there were three hits all occurring within one week.
This federally-funded 1.2 million dollar project will implement a new warning system and detour route to eliminate the frequently occurring truck hits at the CSX rail bridge over Young Street.
This project will create a new warning system alerting overheight vehicles to the upcoming low bridge. Infrared beams trigger a message on an electronic sign and trucks are directed to follow a detour route. Using this technology, we can better protect drivers, the neighborhood and the unobstructed flow of freight and street traffic," said Congressman Higgins.
City of Tonawanda Police Captain Fredric Foels says despite the adequate signage, there is still a problem.
"In 2019, we had the University of Buffalo engineering students take an interest in this bridge. They did a complete study of this bridge and basically said in terms of signage, everything you're doing is right, but it boil down to either driver and attention, or driver inexperience. So this device is going to shoot out a beam, and it'll hit a tall truck, it's going to hit that beam and bounced back and activate the warning lights. Normally, it would be dark for a low car, the beam wouldn't hit it. But a higher truck, that's when the beam would hit it and that would activate the warning lights. It's a very effective system. But as far as signage, what we've got up now, UB said you had more than enough signage, but we were still experiencing the hits," said Capt. Foels.
"Our community has been in search of a solution for decades and I was so thrilled to hear Congressman Higgins was able to secure funding to bring this new technology to Tonawanda. It's well past time to have an updated system to prevent trucks from hitting this railroad bridge," said Assemblyman Bill Conrad.
"64 accidents is way too much," added Tonawanda Mayor John White. "Safety is our main concern. With this new development, new procedure coming in, we're hoping that we'll put an end to it."
This initiative would not require anything of CSX.
"In many cases in the city of Buffalo, throughout Erie County, and throughout the nation, they really don't do a very good job in the maintenance of their bridges. They're unsightly, and in many cases, they're unsafe. So that's a problem and we're not depending on CSX, for anything here. I think that they would probably be reluctant to have anything added to their substandard structures already. This is an initiative by the assemblyman, the mayor and the police department who communicated their concerns," Higgins notes.
Construction is planned to commence in late 2024.
To listen to the full conference, see the player below:
