Mayor happy with bridge flow

By Dan King

Single-lane traffic, the Labor Day Holiday, a town-wide yard sale and a coin drop could have made Route 4 a mess this past weekend, but luckily it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Mayor Ken Bartholomew tried to lobby the state into opening the Poultney Street Bridge to two lanes for the holiday weekend, but the state, for legal reasons, declined to do so.

“The result is that the bridge (remained) one lane all weekend because it is against the law to close it to pedestrian traffic,” Bartholomew said. “Meaning one lane has to be for pedestrians as the regular sidewalk is blocked.”

However, Bartholomew’s lobbying of the state was not completely bleak, as he did manage to get the state to decide to put flaggers on each end of the bridge, to make traffic run a bit smoother.

Originally, Bartholomew thought flagger wouldn’t quite be sufficient, saying, “This will help some. Traffic, I believe still will be backed up for miles in both directions.”

However, when all was said and done, Bartholomew was much happier with the end result.

“Actually the flaggers were a great help, both days,” Bartholomew said. “This went much smoother than I had anticipated.  Not nearly as well as if the bridge were completely open, but much better than with just the lights controlling traffic.  The State did the best they could under the circumstances.  I plan on going over to their Field Office later and expressing my appreciation for their efforts.”

Flaggers were at the both ends of the bridge Friday beginning at 2 p.m. and then again Saturday morning from 8 a.m. to noon.