thruway

Update at 2:13pm: Route 77 (Alleghany Road) is still closed off in the Corfu area.

Emergency crews will temporarily close down Route 77 (Alleghany Road) north of the Thruway to clear a tractor trailer that was in an accident there, according to the Genesee County sheriff's dispatchers. Crews need to be able to get in and get out with the tractor trailer. The road should be opened back up shortly after the vehicle is removed. 

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A special section in this Sunday's Democrat & Chronicle will run down the details on speeding tickets: what to do when you get pulled over and what to do once you've got the ticket. Folks in Genesee County may want to pay close attention. Pembroke, it turns out, ranks third in number of tickets issued for the Thruway.

Pembroke, Genesee County, is the No. 3 spot on Interstate 90 for speeding tickets, according to a Democrat and Chronicle analysis of state Department of Motor Vehicle records. Last year, State Police issued almost 5,000 tickets resulting in convictions along the stretch of the Thruway in Genesee County; 1,738 were issued in Pembroke. Pembroke Town Court allows most speeders to plead to a lesser violation by mail.

Somehow, I don't think speeding will be a problem there today. Here are the current conditions at the Pembroke interchange:

A car collided with a jacknifed tractor trailer on the westbound portion of the Thruway this morning around 6:00am just west of Pembroke, according to WBTA's Dan Fischer. The serious crash left the tractor portion of the truck on a guardrail and the trailer in the middle of the highway, blocking both lanes going west.

Other news stations are reporting that Thruway is blocked off between exits 48A and Exit 49. We could not yet find any updates on how long before the lanes reopen. We'll get you an update when that info becomes available.

In other news, Dan Fischer tells us that the Genesee County Health Department will be holding another "Fly Shot Clinic" from 9:00 to 11:00am this morning at the Senior Center on Bank Street. Did you mean "Flu" there, Dan? I think so. Funny typo, though.

UPDATE (9:50pm): WHAM News in Rochester reports that the left westbound lane of the Thruway was, in fact, re-opened shortly after 7:00am this morning, and the right lane was freed up about an hour after that.

In case you don't know about it (we just found it), there is a still-image web cam on  the Thruway that shows the Batavia exit and the free way. It might come in handy for morning commutes.

So it begins... The Holland Land Office Museum kicked off its countdown of "The Twenty-Five Things that Made Genesee County Famous."

And what, you ask, was the first to make the list?

None other than that 500 mile stretch of bleached tarmac and costly tolls otherwise known as the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway, "the longest toll road in America."

Visit the HLOM site for more info and to keep up with the countdown.

Driving to and from Batavia today I thought of what a habit it has become for me to avoid the Thruway if at all possible.

And I thought of Bill Kauffman again and his essay "Back to Batavia."

The curmudgeons carped and the mossbacks muttered, and the thruway was built. Its first casualty was Route 5, Batavia's Main Street, for years a bustling thoroughfare. Travelers ate at diners along Route 5, and slept in hotels, and shopped at stores—until progress came, and the farms were paved, and Route 5 died. Across Upstate, countless locally owned and owner-operated businesses were bankrupted. Drivers stuck to the thruway and ate at the Howard Johnson's monopoly.

In nearly two years of Western New York residence, I've found myself avoiding the Thruway more often than not.

I dislike the Thruway because:

• The smaller freeways and two-lane roads are often much more interesting, if not prettier drives and they do take you past more locally owned businesses, which generally make for more interesting stops than chains or anything you find at "service exits."  Similar thoughts and advice can be found on RocWiki.
• The toll isn't expensive, but why pay a toll if you don't have to? Besides, regular Thruway usage can add up.
• The alternative routes almost never take more time to drive.
• State Troopers.  I have nothing against law enforcement. In fact, I quite admire the men and women who wear the badge. I am, after all, an ex-cop myself.  But the State Troopers on the Thruway seem to have one job: write speeding tickets.  The Thruway is nothing but a very long speed trap.  Now, I don't speed much myself (never intentionally), but on a freeway as wide, clear, straight and devoid of traffic as I-90, Troopers running radar seem to server but one purpose: Raising money for Albany.  It's an alternative form of taxation, and it doesn't provide much representation. It's too Big Brotherish for me, so I'd rather not participate in the whole Thruway experience.

So you're much more likely to find me tooling down Route 5 than 90.

Has there ever been a "Boycott the Thruway" effort? The the Thruway seems easily avoidable, even for long trips.  So why use it?

What do you think of the Thruway?  Is it a modern transportation convenience, a necessary evil, or something that can and should be avoided as much as possible?

Previously:   Contemplating Bill Kauffman's Batavia