Editor's Notebook May 2024

Craig Mongeau - Editor in Chief - May 2024

Happy May everyone, and I hope all of you got through April well; it was a tough weather month for many of us with lots of rain and wind throughout the Northeast.

As many of you may know, mid-April was National Work Zone Awareness Week and on April 17 Gov. Hochul highlighted State Route 104 within the town of Irondequoit and city of Rochester, as a roadway that will be under intense scrutiny through the 2024 construction season. This announcement came after the DOT's Automated Work Zone Speed Enforcement program registered multiple motorists traveling at life-threatening speeds through work zones along the Route 104 corridor in 2023 — motorists were found to have traveled through a work zone along the road at top speeds of 139, 117 and 110 miles per hour. It's hard to add anything useful to that; those numbers tell their own story and we're all capable of filling in our own adjectives about the people who do this and the reasons why they do it. You can enforce speed limits, but you can't enforce a conscience or to mandate some people to care about somebody other than themselves.

I only sit behind a keyboard, safe and sound, to get Superintendent's Profile to press, but all of you are the ones who actually do all the work to improve roads, make them safer and help create communities, and it's disgusting that it has to be as dangerous as it is. If anyone out there, outside this industry, reads this, please, if you ever speed through work zones, stop. It's never worth it — it's a temporary rush for permanent ruin, of your life and someone else's.

On another, much more positive subject, we're a little less than six months away from the N.Y.S. Highway & Public Works Expo on Oct. 23 in the Exposition Center at the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse. We're so thankful that booth sales are filling up quickly, but there's still some space left. Please see page 53 in this issue if you are considering exhibiting. There, please scan the QR code to get details. As an equipment dealer, service provider or manufacturer, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better venue to meet face-to-face with so many great highway superintendents, DPW professionals and DOT personnel in one location. Your products can help them do their jobs even more productively for their residents.

Thank you and please stay safe. P