McDonald's, proposed for Hoosick St. at the corner of 15th seems to be on a lot of folks minds. I attended the last hearing on this in City Hall and there was a large crowd. The crowd filled the room and there were folks out in the hallway, but I couldn't tell you how many as in the position I was in I could only see those crowded in the doorway. Some folks had their say and then left and others quickly filled their seats.
The Principals for the project presented their case and then the Planning Board allowed comments of which there were many and most of them were concerned about the traffic area as was I. My thoughts were with the added traffic, and may I say, it is a high traffic area anyway and they is NOT going to go away but there will be some added to it. The REAL problem is: most of this traffic now is moving along, but adding the McDonald's will add a lot of stop and turn, stop and go traffic which will really slow things down. My concern was as Hoosick St. has a incline to it going East, and there are so many Tractor Trailers that utilize this route, for each stop and go of the Trailers it is going to be a real slow go for them to even get back up to speed again going through all of their gears only to have to stop again and try to get started again on that hill.
As for the other vehicular traffic, the Intersection lights are going to be a challenge to try and time correctly to keep anything moving smoothly. We already have gridlock at the bottom of Hoosick and 6th where the traffic lights are badly timed. The area between 6th and the end of the exit of the bridge is short, the traffic light is terribly long. So no one on 6th wants to be stuck waiting through a 2nd light cycle go bumper to bumper on the Intersection at high traffic time and the flow of traffic on 6th going North and South comes to a standstill due to the gridlock. This same thing will happen at Hoosick and 15th.
After thinking about this for a while I could only think as much as I detest them is to put a "Rotary" in at the 15th St. intersection, it would have to be wide with a small center to accommodate the Tractor trailers but at least it would keep things moving smoothly with no gridlock and few accidents.
It as always, only my opinion, but That's the Way It Is...
