CLIFTON PARK – Clifton Park residents recently received an update on the Route 146 sidewalk project, which aims to safely connect residents to the town center area and help reduce vehicle emissions.
The Town of Clifton Park held a public open house Monday evening to discuss the Route 146 sidewalks project. M.J. Engineering presented proposed preliminary site plans and details on the $440,000 project.
“We’re trying to promote pedestrian traffic through the corridor, hopefully reducing some vehicular traffic,” M.J.’s project engineer Craig Swayne said. “Really the motive behind this grant is essentially reducing greenhouse gasses.”
The project is funded 50-50 between the town and a grant from the Department of Environmental Conservation, Swayne said. The project includes $220,000 in funding from the DEC through a Climate Smart Communities grant program. The town board had previously approved of a resolution matching 50% of the funds for the project’s total cost of $420,000, in January 2022.
The proposed project’s location is on the north side of Route 146, from the Northcrest Drive intersection to the Maxwell Drive intersection, and would include new pedestrian infrastructure to “infill” the gaps in the sidewalk. This would keep pedestrians from having to cross the “busy highway” if they do not have to, Swayne said.
The project includes installing about 0.3 miles of new five-foot-wide sidewalk for pedestrian travel on the north side of Route 146, which would connect the Northcrest and Robinwood Estates and Tallowwood Apartments neighborhoods to the Town Center area of the town.
The project also includes two crosswalks at unsignalized intersections at Crestmont Drive and Tallow Wood Drive.
Swayne hopes construction on the project will be able to begin in spring 2023, and be completed before the start of the school year in 2023.
“We will be tracking our success throughout the project with the DEC as far as, how many more pedestrians do we have post-construction, then we did pre-construction,” Swayne said. “So we’ll monitor that soon, while school is in session, when we build this and then we’ll come back and monitor it again and see where we are at.”
Monitoring the pedestrian use before and after construction is a part of the grant’s requirements, Swayne said.
“We’ve had a sidewalk on the south side of 146 for many years,” Clifton Park supervisor Phil Barrett said. “This will give residents an opportunity to also have a sidewalk on the north side, so that will increase the opportunity for pedestrian traffic.”
Pedestrians can be seen using the current sidewalk “every once in a while,” Barrett said. He explained, a newer safer sidewalk should increase pedestrian usage on the north side .
“It also connects neighborhoods with our businesses area at Exit 9,” Barrett said. “So that’s another ice connection, and there’s some businesses along the way that the sidewalk will be constructed so that’s another positive that’s in this whole plan.”
The sidewalk project comes as a response to a petition of the neighbors of North Crest, Clifton Park’s Open Space Coordinator Jennifer Viggiani said. The residents of the neighborhood wanted a way to be able to connect to the Town Center area, she explained.
Categories: -News-, Clifton Park and Halfmoon, News, Saratoga County
