Mt. Pleasant Traffic Report Lays Out Town’s Options for Routes 9A, 100

Feedback from Mount Pleasant residents will be sought on a recently completed traffic study that evaluated portions of two state routes and a nearby residential neighborhood that has experienced high volume counts from cut-through traffic.

Last week town officials discussed the findings of the Aug. 23 report from DTS Provident Design Engineering of White Plains, which examined traffic on Route 9A near the Amazon facility, the Route 100 corridor (also known as Bradhurst Avenue) between Route 141 and the Sprain Brook Parkway ramps and the impact on local roads.

In response to a torrent of complaints from Valhalla and Hawthorne residents living between Route 9A and Route 100, the town last November closed Belmont Road, one of the most popular shortcuts used by motorists between the two state roads, as well as West Stevens Avenue.

The town has scheduled a public information meeting for Monday, Sept. 30 at Town Hall at 7 p.m. to review the report with residents. Officials hope the public’s comments can help them form a consensus on short- and long-term solutions.

Current choices for the town include keeping the two streets closed for now to continue to force traffic onto the state roads, reopening both roads or opening Belmont Road but making it one way toward Route 9A.

“Right now, it says closing it is the safest option,” Town Engineer David Smyth said of the report. “The way it’s currently implemented, closing Belmont and West Stevens, it says there are no operational or safety issues. It did note that there are one or two intersections where that could change if we do open it up.”

Smyth was joined by Police Chief Paul Oliva and Highway Superintendent Richard Benkwitt at last Tuesday’s Town Board work session to discuss the study and possible solutions.

One solution would be to maintain the status quo until a new connector road from Skyline Drive to Hospital Road is built in coordination with the first phase of the North 80 project on the Grasslands campus, Fulgenzi said. However, that is expected to take at least two years, and the town would then need to conduct another study to evaluate whether the new road is reducing cut-through traffic.

Oliva said that once the connector road opens, it would likely lessen the burden on Belmont Road cut-through traffic.

“I think it will be a non-issue,” Oliva said. “People are looking for the fastest route to go through and that won’t be the fastest route. There will be a more direct route to get on the Sprain Parkway.”

Until the connector road is built, the town will have difficult decisions to make. The study stated that by closing off Belmont Road it has negatively impacted a couple of other streets.

“However, with traffic, if you stop it in one place, it will tend to go somewhere else,” the report stated. “Closing off Belmont Road from NY Route 9A, which is the start of the biggest cut-thru, helped that area but then more traffic was diverted to Powell Place/Pythian Avenue and the Town received comments on that. Thus, traffic found another route.”

The study found that if only Belmont remained closed, then West Stevens Avenue and Philip Place would likely receive an influx of traffic. Reopening Belmont and West Stevens but making them one-way in opposite directions would not result in a significant reduction in volume, the report noted.

Traffic calming devices such as speed humps and “chokers,” which narrow the road in strategic locations, would each have drawbacks, according to the study. Speed humps would inconvenience residents who live on the affected streets, while the chokers that jut out from the curb would negatively impact snow removal.

Councilwoman Laurie Rogers Smalley said the board will eventually have to make what could be a difficult choice.

“Our responsibility is to make a decision and to put in signage and make these changes that are going to keep them as safe as possible until two years down the road,” Smalley said.

Councilman Mark Saracino added that he believes “traffic safety trumps convenience.”

Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi said while some outspoken residents on streets off of Belmont Road last year urged for its closure, there are others who communicated to officials that they have been inconvenienced.

Discussions over how best to approach the issue uncovered that the problem has existed before the Amazon facility opened last winter.

“In the beginning, everything was Amazon is the problem,” Fulgenzi said. “Then we find out, no, we always had this problem.”

Benkwitt mentioned that when his department was repaving roads in the vicinity, a large portion of the traffic was heading to the medical building at 19 Bradhurst Ave.

One resident, Domenick Vita of Pythian Avenue, said he appreciates the efforts of the town to address the issue and agrees with the study that Belmont should remain closed for now.

He said he noticed an increase in traffic during the height of the pandemic, where volume to and from Westchester Medical Center was using the cut-through regularly.

With multiple development projects progressing in town, including Brightview, the proposed Blythedale Children’s Hospital expansion, the medical center’s expansion and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection construction of a new water tunnel over the next decade, traffic will remain a key worry in Mount Pleasant, Vita said.

“I think the town is headed in the right direction,” he said. “It’s not quite there yet, but it’s headed in the right direction by looking at this. I’m really glad they hired an expert, and the expert guided them here.”

Smyth also recommended to the Town Board to consider a resolution that would recommend to the navigation services WAZE and Google to remove the cut-throughs as a route to go to and from Bradhurst Avenue and Route 9A.

To read the full traffic report, visit https://www.mtpleasantny.com/DocumentCenter/View/1274/Mount-Pleasant—Rt-9A-Analysis—Traffic-Report.