Ballston Spa residents raise traffic concerns; Mayor looks to create advisory panel to address problems

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BALLSTON SPA — Patrick Mangini lives on Rowland Road in the village of Ballston Spa and it can sometimes take him 10 minutes to get out of his driveway because of cars speeding up and down the street, he said.

In a Facebook comment on Mayor Frank Rossi’s post about creating an advisory panel to look at traffic safety and signage issues, Mangini said he’s just waiting for the day he and his family get hit by a car that’s speeding down the road.

Mangini wasn’t the only one to voice his concerns; the post by the mayor has garnered a few dozen comments.

People like Bob Lachut commented that the stop signs at Fenwick and Hamilton streets are constantly being disregarded.

“Plus Fenwick is like a raceway,” he said.

Rossi said this is an issue he has been keeping an eye on for awhile.

“We had centered a lot of our attention on trying to improve the safety and the speeding problems on Hyde Boulevard, which has received a lot of attention over the last few years,” he said. “It’s a wide street, it has a lot of speeding episodes, doesn’t have great crosswalks in it, it’s kind of in the school zone.”

Rossi said the village has done some work to resolve the problems on Hyde Boulevard.

“Although we could do more and need to,” Rossi said.

However, Rossi said there are many other streets in the village facing similar issues.

Now, with the village’s proposed budget done, Rossi said he wants to refocus efforts on addressing those problem areas.

Ryan Johnson, the administrator of the All Things Ballston Spa Facebook group, posted about the issue last week.

In his post he said he watched a car drive on Malta Avenue Elementary going about 40mph.

While he said that may not seem fast it could be deathly to any kid darting across the road to get to and from school.

His post went on to state other areas of concern and then asked people to comment ideas to resolve the problems. The post had received 70 comments as of 1:30 p.m. Friday.

Adam Woodward commented that he thinks the addition of speed bumps or speed dips would help and that the village should ask for assistance from the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department or state police.

Rossi said he and Chief David Bush are in constant communication.

“If I am notified of an area where speeding is occurring, especially around the school or something like that, I always ask him to react to make sure that we have somebody out there and we do,” he said.

He said the police are out there regularly looking for people speeding or committing other traffic violations. Rossi also said people have asked about the addition of an officer for traffic enforcement and it has been investigated.

“It’s probably not something we’re going to do tomorrow but it’s something that obviously could be a possibility down the line,” he said.

Village Trustee Liz Kormos, who commented on the web posting, said the village has made crosswalks more visible and added pedestrian signs, with more to come.

“If that doesn’t help, next step is to make the road look narrower with stripes down the middle and paint in parking spaces (and a bike lane) on the sides,” Kormos said in the post. “Next step is speed humps or speed tables and bump-outs at the crossings. I’ve seen speed humps work in other places but most of the residents of a street have to agree. My advice is to start a petition on your street and ask us (fyi I’m a village trustee and live on Hyde Blvd) to put these measures in place. If enough folks ask, it will happen.”

Rossi said the idea of the advisory panel is to have people spread across the village determine what issues exist and provide information on what issues can be tackled right away and what are longer term concerns that need to be addressed.

Rossi said he has received a few notes from people seeking to be on the advisory panel and will continue collecting information from those interested for a few weeks. From there he said he will map out where people live and pick people from various areas across the village.

Reporter Shenandoah Briere can be reached at [email protected]