Work to upgrade the Main and Partition traffic signal, install pedestrian crossing signs, and redo several crosswalks will begin May 11 and, according to the state, be complete by late September.
Alex Wade, who handles special projects for the village, said recent personnel changes at DOT have led to problems. For example, the traffic light poles weren’t ordered until recently and won’t arrive until summer. New engineers need to be brought up to speed as well.
Meanwhile, other contractors are ready to get moving. Engineers for J. Mullen and Sons, which is doing the crosswalk, will begin on May 11, and the company doing the electrical wiring and work on the traffic signals will be laying the wires and installing the foundations for the light poles so that when they do arrive, they can be installed with the lights.
The crosswalk work will take about one week per corner, Wade said, so that portion of the job should be completed in about a month.
All of the work will be done at night so as not to interfere with rush hour traffic through the village or with the operating hours of the local businesses.
Project supervisors have been looking at the annual HITS schedule in the village and decided work will be done only on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
For the last several years, pedestrians, village officials and police have been asking the DOT for improvements to this intersection. Those calls intensified last year when local resident Robert Carlson stepped off the curb on Partition St. and was hit and killed by a truck. Carlson’s sister, Dinah Neals, has been running an active campaign to get something done at the intersection to make it safer for pedestrians. Earlier this month she tweeted that “the village/Saugerties has NOT sent a message to its citizens by addressing pedestrian signage” with the hashtag #DoItForOurRob.
Neals did not respond to requests for comments on the project that’s set to begin at the intersection on May 11, but village officials say that once the work is completed sometime this summer, it will be safer for both pedestrians and drivers.
Join the family! 
