Schoharie wants tragic Route 30 dead-ended

10/16/2019

By Patsy Nicosia

With the one-year anniversary of Schoharie’s tragic limousine crash still a fresh scar, Floyd Guernsey III wants the stretch of Route 30 the 20 wedding-goers lost their lives on closed for once and for all.
Mr. Guernsey, who lives near the Route 30/30A intersection, said he’s lost track of the number of times tractor-trailers and cars have come hurtling down the hill from Route 7.
At least twice, he said, he looked out his window and saw lights in a field, off the road and headed toward the Schoharie Creek.
Mr. Guernsey, a Schoharie Town councilman, offered the idea to Supervisor Alan Tavenner and fellow councilmen at their meeting Wednesday, suggesting they permanently dead-end Route 30 at the top of the hill at Route 7 near the I-88 bridge.
“There’s not that much traffic there,” he said. “I don’t use it. I think most people would be fine with taking the extra two minutes to go around.
“I just want to see it gone.”
Even before the October 6, 2018 limo accident, Mr. Guernsey and other councilmen had voiced concerns about the intersection—Mr. Tavenner said he lives in fear of a wayward tractor-trailer slamming into a bus leaving BOCES—and again, even before the limo crash, the Department of transportation had started flagging and restricting traffic on the route, they said.
“A lot of us argued about it when they first did it [changed the intersection],” Mr. Tavenner said.
“What better respect can we show for the people who passed?” Mr. Guernsey asked.
“We can build a monument at the bottom, we can build this monument [the dead end] at the top.”
Because Route 30 is a state road, Mr. Tavenner said it would “take an act of Congress to close it” and councilmen agreed to instead ask the Department of Transportation to study closing it.