DOT restriping to add upgrades to Route 9

“When we discovered the DOT was paving Broadway, we saw it as an opportunity to improve long-standing safety issues simply by restriping the roads rather than redesigning them entirely,” Dobbs Ferry Village Trustee Matt Rosenberg told the Enterprise.

In front of the Dobbs Ferry Middle School/High School, a left-hand turn lane will be added from Broadway northbound into the school’s driveway. The new lane will relieve the backup of cars during morning drop-off and after-school pickup hours, as drivers wait behind cars lined up on Broadway to enter the driveway. 

To the north, a crosswalk will be added across Broadway at Sherman Avenue. To the south, no left turns in either direction will be permitted at the intersection of Broadway and Maple Street between 7-9 a.m.

The changes “will improve flow, reduce chaos, and shorten crossing distances for pedestrians,” Rosenberg said. “It will reduce conflicts between cars and cars, and cars and kids.”

The measures piggyback on the school zone created in 2018, extending 300 feet north and 300 feet south of the middle/high school campus, and reducing the speed limit on school days from 30 mph to 20 mph from 7 a.m.-6 p.m.

Farther south, where the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail traverses Broadway at Hatch Terrace, the two northbound lanes will be narrowed to a single lane after Livingston Avenue, reducing the crossing distance. On the southbound side, a right-turn lane for Hatch Terrace will be added.

Beyond the upcoming repaving, the DOT is evaluating the design of Broadway in Sleepy Hollow, Tarrytown, Irvington, Dobbs Ferry, and Hastings. The DOT announced that effort in a letter to the mayors of those villages last August. 

The evaluation was spurred by the Route 9 Active Transportation Study, which was released in November 2018. The five villages paid for the study with a $150,000 grant from the New NY Bridge Community Benefits Program.

The transportation planning firm Nelson/Nygaard worked with 15 representatives of the villages to develop a conceptual design for turning Broadway into a “complete street” that would better accommodate motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. To view that plan online, visit route9active.org.