BATAVIA — County staff are looking into how truck traffic can be addressed in the future if the state Thruway closes, as it did in late December when a blizzard hit Western New York around Christmas.
Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Tim Yaeger spoke at Thursday evening’s Genesee Association of Municipalities meeting to update municipal representatives on the issue.
There have been meetings with the state Department of Transportation to try to address the truck traffic some of the municipalities, including the city and Bethany, Alexander and Wyoming County are struggling with — truck traffic that uses state roads when the Thruway is closed.
“There’s no easy solution. We’re going to continue to have conversations,” Yaeger said.
He said the county has found a way to become a content manager on Google Maps.
“We’re working through our planning department … so we can actually close roads down, so when they try to reroute themselves, they see that those roads are closed down and the map, and their phone, won’t take them that way. It’ll take them a different way,” Yaeger told the group.
There should be something regionally, including other counties in Western New York working with DOT as well, he said.
“It was news, because I brought it up to the Association of Western New York Emergency Managers, which had state agencies there, including the DOT, and they had never heard of such a thing,” he said, referring to Google Maps content management. “They were like, ‘We can do what? We can control maps?’”
The Genesee County Office of Emergency Management coordinator said emergency management officials would also work with other map providers as well.
“I think we uncovered something that’s going to help us, in the long-range, to be able to reroute that traffic… away from the storm and then away from areas of congestion, like the city of Batavia and things like that,” he said.
Yaeger said the Thruway Authority is not the easiest agency to deal with. Sometimes, he’s not notified when the Thruway is closed and reopened. Whatever information he receives from the Thruway, he will pass along in email.
“I typically try to let the fire chiefs know through Bryx 911 (a mobile alerting app). I send out a message with our CAD system,” he said. “I think it’s as important to let the elected officials know that the Thruway is closed, too, because that causes an issue of the secondary state routes.”
Batavia Town Supervisor Gregory Post said that would be an effective way to address the issue and that it was great that the county is working on this.
“I’ll keep you updated as we move along,” Yaeger said.
Deputy Director of Planning Erin Pence is working on the issue and there might be a meeting with content managers coming up soon.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.