Colonie roadwork will mean rough ride for school buses

Colonie

As South Colonie schools open this week, school buses will be driving through a heavy reconstruction project along Sand Creek Road.

Since April, the town has been working on a $2.6 million reconstruction project between Everett and Osborne roads.

At the moment, the road is heavily torn up from Norbrick Drive to Old Myers Drive.

If weather holds, paving should be done in the stretch from Old Myers Drive to Wilkins Avenue Tuesday, but the rest of the road will remain stripped down to the dirt as school opens Thursday. Rocky and with holes dug along its route for utilities, the road is also dotted with construction vehicles, piping and other infrastructure being removed from or inserted under the road surface. Work is slated to continue until Nov. 1, though the final weeks will be for road striping, said Bill Neeley, operations manager for the town's Public Works Department.

While the street will be closed to most cars, he said, school buses will be allowed to pick up passengers.

"School buses will be let through just like local traffic," he said.

Melissa France's daughter, an incoming first-grader at Shaker Road Elementary School, boards the bus by Sweet Willy's Pizzeria, next to Old Myers Drive.

"We've been dealing with this since April of last school year," she said. "Two days the construction people wouldn't let the bus through. They made the driver turn around in a driveway."

The bus driver had to radio other drivers to pick up some students on Sand Creek Road because she could not get to them, France said.

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Colonie roadwork will mean rough ride for school buses