Stone remnants of NY-334 bridge nearly gone

State Highway 334 in the town of Mohawk fully reopened on Tuesday after state road crews spent three weeks removing an old stone abutment.

The jutting piece for decades and decades was once part of a low-hanging bridge owned for the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville Railway. It went out of use in the 1980s and in 1991 was acquired by public corporation Fulton Railroad Properties Inc.

Within the last decade, a number of public officials have deemed the abutment a visibility barrier for drivers, given its position wrapped around a tight curb.

“We'll see what happens,” said Mohawk Town Supervisor Janet DePalma. “We hope for good things and we’ll just wait and see.”

The state Department of Transportation began taking down the abutment on April 16. According to NYSDOT regional spokesperson Heather Tehan, crews started removing pieces of the stone and grading back the hill behind the abutment.

“It was quite a chore to get that all out of there,” said Tehan.

The rest of the project consisted of concrete work, drainage work and re-landscaping.

This work encompasses the second stage of a two-part demolition project first authorized by NYSDOT in December. The first stage targeted the old truss, which was removed in January.

“[The abutment] had to be part of the removal, but we had to wait until there were better conditions to be able to get up there,” Tehan said.

Demolition of the bridge was originally expected to occur in late winter or early spring, but the process was ultimately expedited under emergency orders following a destabilizing bridge hit.

Since 2009, more than 12 trucks have rammed into the low-hanging structure. NYSDOT had deemed the structure dangerous as a result of the back-to-back blows.

Plans from the agency to get authorization from Fulton Railroad Properties Inc. — a board of lawmakers from Gloversville and Johnstown — to take down the bridge had been greeted with a mixed reception.

“I was hearing from people, ‘Oh, it's historical’ and ‘Don't let them take it down’ and I was like, ‘I don't have any options here,’” DePalma said.

Among critics was former Johnstown City Attorney Robert Subik. He went to Gloversville and Johnstown meetings last year and warned lawmakers of Fulton Railroad Properties Inc. that destroying the stone abutment would quash Fulton County’s chances of returning to rail service.

In the mid-2010s, some Montgomery County lawmakers were keen on using grant money to use the structure as a means of connecting the FJ&G Rail Trail with the Erie Canalway Trail. That proposal was permanently tabled.

Now, all that remains of the structure are some slabs of stone built opposite of Route 334.

Even with the massive abutment, Mohawk Highway Superintendent Bill Holvig believes that the curb isn’t suitable for tractor-trailer traffic.

“It's narrow,” Holvig said. “There are guardrails around the edge, it's windy and if one tractor-trailer meets another, it's not good.”

NYSDOT hasn’t ruled out potentially straightening the road in the future, but it's not a project that's “in the works” at the moment, according to Tehan.

Montgomery County Sheriff Jeff Smith, a proponent of NYSDOT taking down the bridge and stone abutment, said that straightening out the road in the future could come with drawbacks.

“If every road was straight, there would be less concerns about visibility, curves, grades, uphills and downhills,” he said. “However, that would also increase speeding most likely, which is another problem we have in the county.”

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