In this shot from June 14, tire tracks suggest the “emergency access” to the Albany school bus barn has been otherwise used.
The Albany City Council Wednesday denied a request by Greater Albany Public Schools to let bus barn employees routinely drive through a residential neighborhood to get to and from work.
In 2018, the city gave GAPS a conditional use permit to build its new bus garage between Ferry and Lyon Streets in southeast Albany.
The permit included access to the bus barn from Ferry, a mainly industrial and commercial street. It also allowed a second access point on the east side of the site, on a new section of Lyon Street, but only in emergencies.
Now the school district asked the city to modify the permit to allow the emergency access on Lyon to also be used to access the employee parking lot at the new bus garage.
That section of Lyon is an isolated, narrow residential street, connecting via 25th Avenue to Marion Street, a north-south collector. Neighbors living there objected to the change. They said the additional traffic from about 80 school bus drivers and bus barn employees — and probably more of them in the furure — would endanger children and harm their neighborhood in other ways.
It didn’t help the GAPS request that there didn’t seem to be any compelling reason why the original permit for an emergency access point should be changed, except that the Lyon Street driveway is closer to the employee parking lot.
As it is, employees are supposed to use the main entrance and exit on Ferry Street on their way to and from work. The buses also use that access, but presumably an employee driving a bus isn’t simultaneously driving to or from work, so where’s the conflict?
The gist of the council discussion at a public hearing Wednesday, and of the eventual unanimous decision to reject the GAPS request, was that the school district should figure out another way to accommodate bus barn traffic in and out.
Here’s a case where the council listened to the residents most affected and did what they asked. (hh)
This is the section of Lyon Street that school officials wanted bus barn employees to use for their commute.
The council “listened” to the residents?
Is that what really happened here? Let’s not misread what motivated the council.
Two GAPS Board candidates endorsed by the Democrat Party lost in the May election.
It’s payback time, and the ‘non-partisan’ council just exercised that political power.
Expressed “political partisan” power in more ways than one.
Whatever the reason the right decision was made, although I doubt this was partisanship. The council would have been irrational fools (or truly had dome partisanship reason) had they approved it. Sounds like upure just trying to stir sh1t.
Perhaps I am wrong but; I don’t think any GAPS employee or school board member made any request at the CC meeting.
“Here’s a case where the council listened to the residents most affected and did what they asked.” But here come good ‘ol Tom Cordier and Gordon Shadle (non-resident of Albany) to complain ad nauseam.
Huh?
I applaud the decision. I was commenting that someone (other than a Gaps employee or school bd member) was asking for a revision to the conditional use permit. That seemed odd to me. Still does.
They hired a consultant to do the request and paperwork. How hard it that to understand? Days of a handshake agreement after greasing the palms of the council is long long over.
Glad they rejected it. There is little reason to send even a quarter of the traffic through a residential area.
Very thankful this was denied!
Appreciate every one of our 25th, Lyon, and Foxwood neighbors that brought this to our attention when they did.
A HUGE THANK YOU!
We are beyond the 300 ft notice mailing boundary and it would have been a huge mess of traffic. Residents would be grid locked coming and going in the morning and evening.
The worst case scenario was misrepresented as 70 employees and the timing of 1 car every 51 seconds at 5:30-6:30 am. As mentioned most people get to work at 5-10 min before so there would be a backup into the neighborhood, and the fact the real worst case scenario is 133 employee parking spots were not on their report as potential employees coming through the streets. The city is growing schools are expanding, thus hiring more drivers is happening now.
We developed and built a few homes and sold a few lots to the south we built the road extension of Lyon and 28th Ave. to Marion and it would have really hurt our children, families, and our streets! The city said we couldn’t run the street from Marion direct to Ferry as they didn’t want residential roads going into industrial business, and said we need to keep them separate.
I have to address the added traffic we have already now, as I watch several young children play in the street by our property. We are going to push for speed bumps on 28th Ave because we have some teens who think our new 700 ft of street(s) is a raceway already.
I’ve had two tragedy’s in my family involving distracted drivers in residential neighborhoods. In 1995, My father, (pedestrian), was killed within 200 ft of his home by a 17 year old distracted driver. In 2009, My 20 year old son (Colen) was hit from behind and killed on his motorcycle within 100 ft from his home also by a distracted (drunk) driver.
The Colennade subdivision is a tribute to our late son!
There was a point made that GAPS really should have planned better and instead of selling the property to the EAST of the Bus Barn they had 260lf along Marion street across from 24th. This would have been a straight path for a separate ingress and egress, if needed without affecting our residents. This would have only affected the exit onto Marion Street potentially.
If we had bought it, we’d sell that portion back to them. A topic for another day!
Respectfully…