Morning Read: Relief for Adirondack commuters?
The Rt. 86 highway between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid is one of the busiest stretches of road in the North Country and it’s in pitiful shape.
The state’s maintenance of the route — and other crucial Adirondack roadways — has been increasingly controversial, as NCPR reported last month.
Now, Nate Brown at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise is reporting that relief may be on the way.
“We have planned a very robust maintenance treatment … that will mill off the asphalt and recycle it back into place as a very thick base for a new pavement overlay,” state Department of Transportation Regional Director Mary Ivey wrote in a recent letter to North Elba town Supervisor Roby Politi.
“If our allocations hold stable through the coming months, the project will take place this construction season.”
In his article, Brown points out that the route sees between eight and eleven thousand cars every day. Right now that adds up to a lot of rattling and jarring over potholes.
Tags: adirondacks, transportation
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But hey, at least Wall Street brokers and their ilk can still afford to send their children to summer camp via private jet (NYT, 7/25/11). Thanks, Andrew! Who needs highways?
Being intimately familiar with Rt 86 between Saranac and PlacId, Lord knows I walked enough of it, it always puzzled me why it wasn’t a 3 or 4 lane highway. It seems to me that would solve a good deal of the problems.
Walker,
Our state doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. We tax and spend more than any other state and have very little to show for it. it’s time for state lawmakers to ensure more efficiency in government -which would allow for road funding- by standing up to the special interests who benefits from inefficiency.
You’re right, Scratchy, we do have a spending problem: we don’t spend enough on highway maintenance and construction and we don’t spend enough on education.
And we also have a revenue problem: we don’t tax the wealthy enough. There’s way more to be gained by raising taxes and eliminating loopholes for those who can afford to pay more than there is to be gotten by squeezing public sector workers further.
Okay, I’ll bite. So how much more do we need Walker? I don’t know about you but my taxes keep going up and the schools keep saying they need more. Lotto was supposed to pay for education, where’s that money going? How many and which loopholes do we need to eliminate and at what income level should they start? How much more spending do we need for highways?
I’m not arguing, I’m asking you what you want. Simply saying we don;t spend enough or tax enough without targets tells me nothing.
I want enough money spent on highways so that they are safe. I want money spent on infrastructure, like bridges, that they are repaired before they become unrepairable. I want enough money spent on public education to make it work, and work well. As for taxes, I wouldn’t mind paying more, but I think there’s plenty of room to raise taxes on those folk who find it worthwhile to charter a private jet to fly their kids to and from their $10,000 summer camp (I guess the $50,000 play house in their back yard isn’t enough for them). And don’t try to tell me they’ll pack up and move– NYC is the center of their universe, and always will be.
I want our corporations to pay their fair share. I want to take back money from our bloated military industrial complex and pour it into roads and bridges and schools. I want to stop subsidies to companies that reap billions in profits while exporting jobs overseas.
As for which loopholes to close, let’s start with the special deal for hedge fund managers. Why not end the special capital gains tax rate? Interest deductions for second homes. Etc., etc….
Maybe we should take a business-like approach, and look at what other countries’ tax codes look like, identifying and adopting best practices.
But none of this is going to happen as long as our politics is steeped in lobbyist’s cash.
You asked.
I agree with Walker somewhat. Taxes are okay. I could pay a little more. However I would just as soon the road that goes by my summer property was returned to a seasonal or an unpaved road. Just my nonresident , nonvoting .02.
“I want enough money spent on public education to make it work, and work well.”
NY spends more education, on a per student basis, than anywhere else in the world. The problem with education is a lack of accountability: for students who misbehave and for teachers who fail to perform.
So you figure spending less money will fix that?
Walker, those are mostly generalities, how about specifics? How much more do we need to spend on education? Roads and bridges? And what income defines the “rich” that needs to pay more? You want Betty to lose the interest deduction for her second home, how does Betty feel about that? Won’t that discourage people from buying camps in the Park, etc? Our corporate taxes, IIRC, max out at 39%, how much higher do they need to go?
I’m with you on ending most subsidies and loopholes. In fact I’m in favor of a flat tax or consumption tax. But I want spending cuts to go with it. Maybe you want to pay more taxes, I don’t. In fact I don’t personally know anyone that WANTS to pay more taxes.
Ummm I don’t have a mortgage deduction on my second home. In fact I don’t have a mortgage. And I don’t mind paying a little more in taxes. And further, I am fine with the dacks being primarily funded(schools roads etc. etc., by people who are not residents(and consequently don’t vote there) I would like more tech service availability and I would like the town roads returned to seasonal or dirt. Basically it costs about 1 million dollars to redo a mile of State highway. That in my opinion is too costly, right now, and so at my home I do contact my legislator and tell them how I feel about that.
Bret, how should I know, I don’t pretend to be an expert. I just know that our schools don’t seem to be doing very well, and our roads and bridges are in bad shape, and the Republican party is trying to cut the size of government to get it down to where they can drown it in the bathtub.
I don’t want government drowned! I want a functioning EPA to protect the environment. I want the IRS to have enough funds so that they can successfully find and prosecute tax cheats. I want the FDA to be an effective watchdog over food and drugs. I want police and fire protection. I would REALLY like a single-payer health care system, like every other civilized nation in the world. I want our bridges and highways repaired and new ones built as needed. And I think we can afford all that– we’re still a rich country, and our tax rates are at historic lows.
As to “how rich is rich,” it’s not that difficult: let’s just restore the rates that existed before Reagan started this whole mess with his trickle down Voodoonomics. And don’t talk to me about “job creators” — that’s mostly bogus, and if you’re serious about that, let’s just have a reasonable one-time tax credit for each job actually created. As for corporate taxes maxing out at 39%, that’s great, but how many of them pay anything like that… how many of them pay anything at all?
And Betty, I agree on the dirt roads. A lot of roads that ought to be gravel were blacktopped around the time of the 1980 Olympics. And once they’ve been blacktopped, it’s an almost impossible battle to get anyone to take them back to gravel.