I can't help but wonder,what is under the street of upper broadway,in the Schenectady Bellevue neighbourhood.
Everyday like clock work at least 50-100 18 wheeler trucks packed with provisions for price chopper supermarkets are in route to price chopper warehouse,and some are going to Rotterdam industrial park. What I have noticed is that the the trucks are damaging the road,causing potholes to form.It is so bad that the road is becoming soft,where I feel thata large sinkhole will form.I am aware that the city is cash strapped and in debt,but these roads are in need of repair ASAP,I feel that this an incident of epic proportions about to happen,once the roads give way.I also notice that the houses on broadway shake everytime one of these trucks go by,leading me to think,that there is a mystery under the street of upper broadway!!!

One of only many problem streets in the city, even worse now considering those last 2 storms which is literally crumbling our streets. I'm sure I'm not the only one spotting huge chunks of blacktop all over the roads recently. The recent roads they resurfaced aren't holding up good at all, I know they said it wouldn't but I expected it to last longer then it has I think they're more concerned with finishing Erie Blvd and forgetting that the rest of the city is in need of repair.

Broadway from the hill to the city line has old trolley tracks under the pavement. The metal tracks and the asphalt
expand and contract at different rates causing terrible bumps at times making your vibrate apart. The asphalt will
continue to separate quickly until they remove the metal tracks. There is a good foundation of cobblestone under
the asphalt.

Quoted from Libertarian4life

Broadway from the hill to the city line has old trolley tracks under the pavement. The metal tracks and the asphalt
expand and contract at different rates causing terrible bumps at times making your vibrate apart. The asphalt will
continue to separate quickly until they remove the metal tracks. There is a good foundation of cobblestone under
the asphalt.

It would be a good thing to bring back the trolley.

I dont think the trolleys are responsible for making an entire house shake.I heard that Bellevue was called Bellevue Flats and it was made up of  diffrent kinds of soil,I also heard that G E was involved in some type of superfund clean up of their site,including Bellevue.I think Bellevue sits on an ancient pond or reservoir,I could be wrong,with the population boom,the city had to divert old ponds and water ways to accommodate,the population,by piping and capping the ponds,which would empty into the Mohawk river.The last rainstorm we had is evidence to this because at 890 and crane street hill,the water broke thru from underground,causing a sinkhole,that wass quickly repaired.The city needs to do more to fix these problems,because I expect more severe storms this summer,that will test schenectadys ageing infrastructure,as all ways mother nature will prevail!

I don't know about ponds under Bellevue but 890 use to be a park with a river--the road is pretty much where the river was. My grandmother had pictures of it from when she was young (1910s). It was a beautiful park. Wish I could find them right now but they must be with the things my mother inherited.

[quote=1601The city needs to do more to fix these problems,because I expect more severe storms this summer,that will test schenectadys ageing infrastructure,as all ways mother nature will prevail![/quote]



So true.

Sadly, the dems in the city prefer to spend the taxpayers' money, wildly and uncontrollably, on their rich cronies downtown.   Instead of making their millionaire and billionaire cronies, owners of downtown properties, pay taxes, the dems prefer to give out permanent 100% tax exemptions and make the financially struggling homeowners pay.  

And since the taxes are almost the highest in the country, people are fleeing the city in droves, houses up for sale everywhere as far as the eye can see and beyond in the city.  Taking a year for a house to sell is NOT a good thing.   Other's just abandon their homes.

And the taxes are so high because the financially struggling homeowners of the city are mandated to make up for the revenue lost by the rich downtown not paying taxes.   Giving out all these tax exemptions, and spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on downtown has NOT resulted in any return for the homeowners---the neighborhoods are ignored, trees are breaking up sidewalks and the city refuses to take down trees but then mandates that the homeowner spend thousands to replace a sidewalk, the of course the city still refuses to take down the trees which means the homeonwer must shell out thousands more in a few years because the roots of the city tree are still causing damage to the sidewalk, which is city property but the city mandates homeowners are responsible for, maintaining and replacing.   Stupid or what?

And of course since the city is spending wildly and uncontrollably on downtown, again, it does NOT provide any return of improving neighborhoods, instead, the infrastructure rots, a paltry 2.75 miles of street gets paved in a whole year, so the homeowners, the taxpayers, in the neighborhoods incur costly damage to their cars.  Then then there are the breaks, and there are the rain storms which cause water to back up into peoples basements, causing costly damage to peoples homes and the city REFUSES to pay for damages, but the city CAN force the taxpayers to pay to fix their own homes (code violations) AND the DEMS force the homeowners to pay for rehab or new buildings for their millionaire and billionaire cronies downtown.  And the DEMS make the financially struggling taxpayers, in a terrible economy, pay for a lavish, extravagant, gold ceiling for King Philip and his precious Proctors, of course, at the same time while the DEMS choose to make the homeowners pay for an ILLEGAL STAR exemption for King Phillip.

Yes, even if we don't live in the city, we all have a stake in seeing it improve.   But the FACT is, the ONLY ones getting anything out of the hundreds of MILLIONS of TAXPAYER dollars spent on downtown are the DEMS and their rich crony property owners.   The tax base is FALLING DRASTICALLY, home values are PLUMMETING, taxes are almost the highest in the whole country, home sale prices are down in the city while virtually everywhere outside the city the sales prices are up, ESSENTIAL services TO THE PEOPLE and TO THE NEIGHBORHOODS is being eliminated while UNNECESSARY things, such as decor, is being spent on downtown.   Infrastructure is failing, snowplowing curtailed, street paving cut, theft from water and sewer funds to put into the general fund to create a PHONY surplus, homeowners unable to sell their homes, PAID political cronies of the DEMS paid to rubber stamp assessment grievances with "denied, insufficient data" combined with a REFUSAL of the DEMS to reassess the whole city despite the OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE and MORE THAN "substantial data" results in judges finding in favor of homeowners in court.   All this is EVIDENCE of major troubles, major problems in the city.

And I DEFY anyone to be MAN ENOUGH to provide EVIDENCE to the contrary.   Let's see who is MAN ENOUGH to produce the EVIDENCE on these boards to show that the tax base is increasing, that the home values are increasing, that sale prices are increasing, that homes are selling for the market values the city says they are worth, to show that services to the neighborhood are increasing, to show that the city is cutting down trees, to show that the city is declaring snow emergencies, etc. etc.   Let him who is MAN ENOUGH produce EVIDENCE of this OR just ADMIT that things are not good.

  What is under the street of upper broadway?               _ off _        

Quoted from Parent

I don't know about ponds under Bellevue but 890 use to be a park with a river--the road is pretty much where the river was. My grandmother had pictures of it from when she was young (1910s). It was a beautiful park. Wish I could find them right now but they must be with the things my mother inherited.

Technically, the green space along I-890 is still technically park land - Pleasant Valley Park.  My understanding is that that park land along with what is now Central Park was purchased when George Lunn was our mayor.  He envisioned a "ribbon" of park land enclosing the most populated area of the city (at that time), and don't forget that hundred years ago most of the population actually lived in what is "downtown" and just beginning to develop along the surrounding hills.

110 years ago, there were farms in what is now Mont Pleasant, which was still called Engine Hill, and Bellevue.  The Church of St. Adalbert originally bought land where the old Rite-Aid and Marcella's stand and intended to build the parish complex there but were instructed by the then bishop that the site was "too far out in the country" to build a church.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

It would be a good thing to bring back the trolley.

Why on earth would it be a good idea? I never really post on this site but I will when I read something REALLY dumb. There is nothing on Broadway that would attract enough people to make that a good idea.

In the real world that most of us operate in, people who constantly make bad business decisions get fired (and earn a reputation which follows them). I see you post things all of the time, and my feedback to you is that you have zero business sense and even less common sense.

You would not last a minute in the private sector- people like me would put you out of business so fast your head would spin.

Quoted from mantis28h

Why on earth would it be a good idea? I never really post on this site but I will when I read something REALLY dumb. There is nothing on Broadway that would attract enough people to make that a good idea.

In the real world that most of us operate in, people who constantly make bad business decisions get fired (and earn a reputation which follows them). I see you post things all of the time, and my feedback to you is that you have zero business sense and even less common sense.

You would not last a minute in the private sector- people like me would put you out of business so fast your head would spin.

Plus, there used to be a city full of people downtown. That's why the trolleys were built.

Now. downtown is a ghost town after 5 pm.

Except for the drunken idiots that play frogger on Erie Blvd all night.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

It would be a good thing to bring back the trolley.

Quoted from mantis28h

Why on earth would it be a good idea? I never really post on this site but I will when I read something REALLY dumb. There is nothing on Broadway that would attract enough people to make that a good idea.

In the real world that most of us operate in, people who constantly make bad business decisions get fired (and earn a reputation which follows them). I see you post things all of the time, and my feedback to you is that you have zero business sense and even less common sense.

You would not last a minute in the private sector- people like me would put you out of business so fast your head would spin.

Agreed manti28th.   That "voice" is just the voice of a fairy telling fairy tales and living in a fairy tale world.   Kind of like the words of that song, remember, "...come back, when you grow up boy; you're still living in a fairy tale world...."

Quoted from mantis28h

Why on earth would it be a good idea? I never really post on this site but I will when I read something REALLY dumb. There is nothing on Broadway that would attract enough people to make that a good idea.

In the real world that most of us operate in, people who constantly make bad business decisions get fired (and earn a reputation which follows them). I see you post things all of the time, and my feedback to you is that you have zero business sense and even less common sense.

You would not last a minute in the private sector- people like me would put you out of business so fast your head would spin.

When the trolley lines were first laid down just 100 years ago, there were mostly farms in Bellevue, Mont Pleasant, what is now Central and Upper State Street,   and the area east of Union College.    So, one could say that the folks who built that trolley system were really dumb to be building trolleys where "there is nothing that would attract enough people to make that a good idea."   But they did build the trolley lines and developers built the residential buildings which were followed by the commercial buildings and churches, schools, parks, etc.
The trend in urban planning is to make communities easier to get around without using automobiles -- encouraging walking, biking and the use of means of mass transit like trolleys and light rail systems.

As for your personal attack, you obviously don't know what you are talking about.  I would tell you where you can put your petty insults and ignorant comments .. but then apparently that is where you got them from in the first place.

100 years ago there was stuff downtown that the people up in Bellevue didn't have such as a train station, library, etc. We still have a library and train station but people don't use them the way they used to. Nobody from Bellevue goes downtown to spend the afternoon shopping. Downtown is not a center of commerce like it used to be when the cities were the only place to go. It isn't going to be a center of commerce because nobody shops at a bank or a bar or Proctor's or a vacant DOT building. Nobody works at ALCO and there isn't any industry going in to replace it.
There are a lot of welfarites up there on Broadway who might like to ride back up the hill from DSS but that isn't reason enough to put the trolley tracks back together. Downtown is not a destination.

Quoted from Madam X

100 years ago there was stuff downtown that the people up in Bellevue didn't have such as a train station, library, etc. We still have a library and train station but people don't use them the way they used to. Nobody from Bellevue goes downtown to spend the afternoon shopping. Downtown is not a center of commerce like it used to be when the cities were the only place to go. It isn't going to be a center of commerce because nobody shops at a bank or a bar or Proctor's or a vacant DOT building. Nobody works at ALCO and there isn't any industry going in to replace it.
There are a lot of welfarites up there on Broadway who might like to ride back up the hill from DSS but that isn't reason enough to put the trolley tracks back together. Downtown is not a destination.

With rising costs of gas and other issues, the trend is shifting back towards urban cores ("downtown") -- THAT has been well documented for anyone who wishes to educate themselves on urban planning trends.

Downtown was a destination -- Downtown is becoming a destination -- Downtown will be a destination.

Oh -- and no one said that one could use a renewed trolley to travel from say Bellevue to Downtown -- you could extend the trolley to run to Rotterdam Square Mall or other destinations.   Also, the old trolley system used to enable folks to travel from anywhere in the City of Schenectady to another part of the city or to Troy (along what is now Troy-Schenectady Road which was originally the trolley line and not a street) or to Albany (along what is now Central Avenue which was originally the trolley line and not a street) or to Ballston Spa, Saratoga and even Lake George (along what is now Route 50 which was originally the trolley line and not a street) or Amsterdam (along what is now Route 5).

There were folks like you back then --- the ones that told Mr. Carl that he was stupid to build his new store east of the canal because no one would walk that far out of town to go shopping, the ones who told Dewitt Clinton that it was stupid to build a canal from Albany to Buffalo, the ones who thought it was stupid to pave roads between cities because no one was really going to be buying and using that new contraption called the automobile .. and on and on.