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[froggie]

Mainly referring to NY 7 from the east side of Troy to the start of the Bennington Bypass.

I've been on this segment several times...most recently this weekend.  But even moreso now, I feel that it needs two things.  Badly:

- A full depth pavement reconstruction.

- Passing lanes.

For the most part, the pavement is a jumble of patched-up potholes.  VERY poor condition.  Although it needs a full depth reconstruction, IMO, even a good mill-and-overlay would at least improve things.

As for passing lanes, optimally the route would be 4 lanes (though traffic volumes only justify such west of the reservoir), but that's just not going to happen.  Still, given the volume of traffic on the road, the limited passing opportunities, and the frequency at which platoons of vehicles form behind slow traffic, it would be in everyone's best interests to add a few passing lanes.  At an absolute minimum, NYSDOT should add a climbing lane on the long hill climb just west of NY 22.

[leifvanderwall]

That's actually part of my I-92 and I'm glad you wrote in about the road problems because I'm wondering if a freeway could be built to either gobble up the corridor or follow it.

[Ian]

On my Picasa page, I have an interstate idea of the section of NY 7 your talking about:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Iansignal/MyInterstateIdeas#5322004197141082834

I-987

-i

[Alps]

I-92 was supposed to be up at the US 4 corridor, anyway, taking I-88 and extending it northeast well beyond the Albany area.  There were certainly alternatives because this was only a conceptual idea, but the US 4 corridor was ranked above VT 9 for getting the freeway across the state.  I guess.  I don't know that much about the proposals.  What I could see is an I-987 following NY 7 east to Bennington.

[Dougtone]

Mainly referring to NY 7 from the east side of Troy to the start of the Bennington Bypass.

I've been on this segment several times...most recently this weekend.  But even moreso now, I feel that it needs two things.  Badly:

- A full depth pavement reconstruction.

- Passing lanes.

For the most part, the pavement is a jumble of patched-up potholes.  VERY poor condition.  Although it needs a full depth reconstruction, IMO, even a good mill-and-overlay would at least improve things.

As for passing lanes, optimally the route would be 4 lanes (though traffic volumes only justify such west of the reservoir), but that's just not going to happen.  Still, given the volume of traffic on the road, the limited passing opportunities, and the frequency at which platoons of vehicles form behind slow traffic, it would be in everyone's best interests to add a few passing lanes.  At an absolute minimum, NYSDOT should add a climbing lane on the long hill climb just west of NY 22.

I would argue that Hoosick St. in Troy (NY 7 to you) would need to be bypassed, since it seems like that road is a royal pain.  But it would be cheaper just to restrict access to Hoosick St. by blocking off some side streets.  I doubt either would happen though.

[Dougtone]

Such a bypass would be nice...but I can't think of a feasible place to put it.

Such a bypass couldn't easily be put in or even shoehorned in.  To the north of Hoosick Street, there is a crummy neighborhood, but then there's Frear Park and the Oakwood Cemetery, where Sam Wilson, aka Uncle Sam, is buried.  To the south, there's downtown Troy, which is supposed to be undergoing some sort of renaissance as a cheaper alternative to living in downtown Albany, and also Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

There have been proposals of building an I-90 spur from Rensselaer towards Troy, but that would only go to the Rensselaer Tech Park and US 4 near the HVCC Campus in South Troy, so it wouldn't work as a good way to bypass Troy

[xcellntbuy]

There have been proposals to rebuild the 37-mile stretch of NY 7 from Sycaway (just east of Troy) to the Vermont state line for decades.  The road has been a mess for years and grossly overloaded on the weekends.  On weekdays, people actually commute from as far away as Hoosick Falls on NY 22.  There are couple of 1970-built sections with extremely wide shoulders that could accomodate four lanes, but I believe the road remains two lanes.

The towns along the route are solely dependent on the road for commerce and bypassing them would wreck their already fragile economies.  NY 7 also has a long causeway through the middle of the Tomhannock Resevoir and building a bridge bypassing the current road would cost a fortune.  When the paper mills closed and the railroads collapsed in the mid-1970s, not much was left but travelers to and from Bennington, VT.

Mark Alan