How will Legoland affect traffic?

BY ERIKA NORTON
GOSHEN — Ever since word that a Legoland New York theme park was headed to Goshen, one of the most-asked questions has been: How will it affect traffic in an area already famous for congestion?
Most park guests will arrive and depart via NYS Route 17, described as a major “urban principal arterial expressway” by the state Department of Transportation. An average of 63,000 vehicles travel per day between exits 124 and 125, the exits nearest the Legoland site.
Two recent documents — the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and the Traffic Impact Study — highlight the challenges facing the planned 153-acre project, to take up 153 acres on a 523-acre site on Harriman Drive.
The traffic study, available online, is more than 6,000 pages long. Most of it is made up of charts containing a bewildering array of arrows and lines. Here are the outlines of the situation, ahead of a Dec. 15 public hearing to be held at C.J. Hooker Middle School:
Main traffic plansAccording to Philip Grealy, the project's traffic expert, who works for Maser Consulting, most of the traffic coming to the park — about 60 to 65 percent — will arrive from the east. The plan is to have traffic:
Take Exit 124 off Route 17,
Travel east along the Route 17M connector road,
Turn right onto South Street, and then
Turn left onto Harriman Drive, and finally to
The main access road for the park.
Based on similar-sized parks, between 1.5 and 2.5 million annual visitors are anticipated, according to the DEIS. Expected peak daily traffic is from 4,500 to 5,000 vehicles entering the park over the course of the day, with about 1,500 entering vehicles at peak hour.
These volumes are small compared to other regional traffic generators, such as Woodbury Common, the Galleria at Crystal Run and the Palisades Center, according to the DEIS. These facilities see between 15,000 and 25,000 entering vehicles.
Most traffic leaving the park will return to Route 17 eastbound, Grealy said. From Harriman Drive, they'll turn right onto the Exit 125 ramp.
“The heaviest volumes coming towards our site, getting on or off of Route 17, are in the form of a right-turn movement,” Grealy said."Which is good.”
Planned improvementsA number of upgrades are planned for Route 17 to make this plan work, Grealy said, including widened lanes, new turning lanes, new traffic signals, new signs, extended acceleration and deceleration lanes, and improved ramps. More specifically, these improvements include:
Widening the Route 17-Exit 124 westbound ramp to provide a continuous right turn lane exiting the ramp, and dual left turn lanes;
Widening the intersection of South Street and Route 17M;
Widening the South Street Bridge, providing a left and left/through lane at the Harriman Drive intersection and widening Harriman Drive to provide a two-lane receiver for left turns from South Street;
Extending the existing deceleration lanes and acceleration lanes on Route 17 at the Exits 124 and 125 ramps; and
Creating a roundabout at Route 17-Exit 125 eastbound.
The state transportation department already includes the roundabout at Exit 125 in its longstanding plan to convert Route 17 into Interstate 86, Grealy said. The roundabout will bring vehicles leaving Legoland back to Route 17 while also allowing traffic to get off the highway from the west and toward the site.
Traffic signals and adaptive signal technology, including video detection, software and hardware, will also be installed at four key intersections. Signals at the Glen Arden and the BOCES access points are also being considered.
Since school buses arrive before the park will open, at 10 a.m., traffic to and from BOCES shouldn’t present a problem, said Phil Royle, Head of Community and Project Relations for Legoland New York, .
While there's some activity at BOCES during the summer, the park’s busiest season, Grealy said the extra traffic won't be significant.
“These improvements will be there for use throughout the year,” he said. "And they’ll actually help flow in and out of that whole area, including the school bus traffic and any traffic to BOCES and any other traffic.”
At the Heritage Trail crossing on South Street, traffic volumes are already significant and will increase with Legoland, according to the DEIS. So installation of a signal, such as a “rapidly flashing beacon” (RFB), is planned. Grealy noted that the Town of Goshen has asked that no emergency access go through the Arcadia Hills subdivision.
Visitors will park their vehicles immediately after entering the park and pay for parking upon exiting. Royle said this has worked in Europe but will be the first of its kind in North America.
“It removes the pressure off the infrastructure and onto me as the operator to get people to have their tickets ready when they’re leaving the park,” Royle said. “They can only leave when they’ve got their parking ticket. It removes that pressure completely so vehicles can just flow straight in.”
Other possibilitiesA second option, in which a flyover ramp to Harriman Drive from Route 17 brings traffic directly into and out of the park, was developed but will likely not be used, Grealy said.
“I think everyone's perceptions originally when asking for a flyover were that it would help Route 17,” Royle said. “Well it doesn’t. Route 17 traffic still remains Route 17 traffic. It just helps get cars into the park quicker.”
Residents have also wondered whether Route 17 will widen to three lanes in each direction. Grealy said the state is continuing to look at this option, which may occur over time — but not as part of this project.
The state right now is focusing on its $100 million improvement project at the Woodbury interchange area. It's looking at removing toll plazas, like at the Tappan Zee Bridge, which Grealy said would alleviate bottleneck there.
Advantages
An advantage of the park’s demographic, focused on children two to 12 years old, is that arrivals and departures are spread out across the day, Royle said.
“It’s not like when you go to Six Flags with your friends,” Royle said. "You all get there really early and you stay until 10 or 11 p.m., when it closes. When you’ve got little ones, one family might have a seven-year-old and one family might have a four-year-old, they’re all arriving at different times, especially annual passholders who don’t need to come in for the whole day.”
Bus service connecting from various collecting points, such as a pickup point in Manhattan, are also being developed to encourage bus transport and reduce the number of automobile trips, according to Grealy. Woodbury Common currently has express bus service to and from Manhattan, a service that could be expanded to include Legoland as a separate destination.
“The thing to remember is that traffic for us is as big a concern as it is for everyone else,” Royle said. “With how social media is active these days, if our guests sit in traffic for 30, 40 minutes, an hour, whatever it may well be, they’re on TripAdvisor and Facebook before they’ve even parked their vehicle. So it doesn't help us at all.
“If people are stuck in traffic for any reason, they'll be on social media quicker than we can deal with it and they’ll come to the park once and they won’t come again and that is not good for our business. We don’t let that happen in Florida, we don't let that happen in California, and we certainly won’t be letting it happen here.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the date of the welcome center grand opening. The center is already open but regular hours have not yet been established.