Traffic
The downside of the revenue is the traffic generated by the mall, particularly on major shopping days. Black Friday 2001 in particular was remembered for protracted snarling of not just the expressways leading to Woodbury Common but the local roads as well. Some motorists were trapped on the mall's internal roads for hours. Woodbury town officials and residents were extremely upset and pressed state police and Premium Outlets' parent company, Simon, for a solution for future years as they said the company had been unresponsive to such concerns in the past. The following Memorial Day, state troopers, Woodbury police and mall officials tested a new plan whereby they viewed the situation from a command center and made decisions jointly.
However, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend in 2006 also led to some legendary snarling, since bad weather abated just in time for back-to-school sales and roads backed up: U.S. Route 6 was bumper-to-bumper all the way to Palisades Interstate Parkway and the Thruway was backed up 15 miles (24 km) north to Newburgh. Officials called on the state to build a Route 32 exit ramp that lets southbound drivers reach the Thruway without turning left and blocking traffic. It was reported afterwards that New York's Department of Transportation had accelerated the process of designing such a connection.
Heavy mall-related traffic is more than just an inconvenience to Woodbury residents, since as the name "Central Valley" implies, the mall is at one end of a lengthy valley between the Hudson Highlands and Harriman State Park on one side and Schunemunk Mountain on the other. Vehicle emissions thus tend to lower air quality. Many Woodbury residents feel the Mall has brought increased crime, traffic and pollution but little else to the town.
On Black Friday 2007, Woodbury Common held its second annual Midnight Madness attracting many people. Traffic at one time was held up for 10 miles (16 km) on the New York State Thruway.
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Famous quotes containing the word traffic:
“Poems stirred
into paper coffee-cups, eaten
with petals on rye in the
sun—the cold shadows in back,
and the traffic grinding the
borders of spring ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“There’s something about the dead silence of an office building at night. Not quite real. The traffic down below is something that didn’t have anything to do with me.”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)
“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)