With hordes of people headed to Buffalo and Niagara Falls this weekend for the solar eclipse Monday, it’s not the best time to shut down part of the Thruway.
But that’s what’s happening.
The Thruway’s eastbound lanes will be closed between Westfield, Exit 60, and Fredonia, Exit 59, for 14 hours – between 5 p.m. Friday and 7 a.m. Saturday – to conduct emergency repairs to an overpass.
That means motorists heading north along Lake Erie from the Southern Tier and places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh ahead of Monday’s eclipse viewing will find themselves taking an 18-mile detour through the villages of Westfield and Fredonia to get to Buffalo, Niagara Falls or other points north.
Josh Myers, the fire chief and emergency manager for the Village of Fredonia, said he’s been told that based on “historical patterns,” the detour will reroute about 618 vehicles per hour through the area between 5 and 8 p.m. and 167 vehicles per hour after 8 p.m. But that does not appear to account for the hundreds, or thousands, of additional vehicles that may be on the road due to the eclipse.
“That’s a lot of volume coming from Fredonia, but on the same hand, I get it,” he said.
New York State Thruway Authority spokesman Jonathan Dougherty said the agency knows the timing isn’t great but that the repairs can’t be helped.
The affected North Road bridge in Chautauqua County has been struck twice this week – on Monday and Tuesday – by tractor-trailers that were too tall for the overpass. State Police ticketed those drivers, Dougherty said.
The bridge also was struck earlier in the year, and the three accidents have “severely damaged” some of the metal beams supporting the bridge deck, he said.
“It’s inspected every time it’s hit, and then consulting with our engineers, we determined that the damage to the girder needs to be removed immediately to stabilize the overpass,” Dougherty said. “It’s for safety.”
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