Sam Niu ’15, Eunice Ju ’15: A new traffic light has been set up at the intersection of Route 252 and Sawmill Road in conjunction with the new Liseter housing development being built off of Route 252.
Mark Notaro, Episcopal Academy’s Director of Plant and Operations, stated that the light will be “a way to control [Route 252] traffic especially in the morning rush hour, allowing the people to get in and out of the development”. Because Route 252 is a busy road which many students use to travel to and from school, Notaro believes that the light “may make the commute in the morning a little longer especially coming north down 252 from Route 3.” Nevertheless, the light may make the Sawmill road and Route 252 intersection safer and quicker, as turning off of 252 previously was slow and dangerous.
When asked about the new light’s effectiveness, Notaro said, “I have a feeling that that road…might get backed up a little further.” He said that the engineers will most likely time these lights with the ones just outside of our campus and the other nearby lights in order to alleviate traffic and keep the cars moving. He believes it may “be less than efficient…but we’ll have to wait…to see how it works.”
Photo Courtesy of Brittany Belo’14
Notaro believes that the lights were implanted to accommodate the newly built houses, saying, “There’s 440 plus houses, which translates into probably one thousand cars or close to one thousand cars for all [the] different people who live or service that development.” The sheer number of cars that are predicted to be introduced to the area with the construction of the development will likely lead to increased traffic. According to Notaro, the light is just “a way to keep [the traffic] organized, and to reduce traffic jams and accidents.”
As the Liseter development goes through a four-phase construction plan, the lights will play an increasingly bigger role in the traffic on route 252. The speed of the construction is dependent on the labor itself, in terms of the time taken to build a house and the rate at which the houses are sold. As more houses are built, sold, and moved into, the development’s population will move closer to Sawmill Road and our campus. This makes the lights more crucial in allowing the inhabitants to leave the development during the morning rush hour. In the meantime, Notaro said the Liseter development inhabitants and services “are going to have to go down and use the Goshen Road entrance and exit.” Despite possibly backing up route 252, Notaro believes that the implementation of this light is similar to the implementation of the traffic circle outside of EA’s campus. He said, “it [may not greatly] help the situation, but it will mitigate it as best as [it] can.”