The Sorry State of Greenwich Street

Greenwich Street cobblestones1Steve Boyce wrote in about something that everyone on Greenwich Street has to be aware of: the atrocious state of the cobblestoned stretch south of Canal.

Greenwich Street cobblestones3I live at the corner of Vestry and Greenwich, and have been watching the steady disintegration of the cobblestone street work along Greenwich that was completed just a few years ago. That recent work was to replace the original cobblestones that were paved over right after 9/11 to “provide better transportation for emergencies” or something like that, using the 9/11 emergency money.

My own theory is that the work was either poorly executed, or, was not designed for the current loading of traffic—or both. I do think we’ve had a steadily increasing share of heavy trucks due to the high level of construction downtown. For example, a fully loaded cement truck weighs 33 tons—a car, 2 tons. And there are a lot of cement trucks around. One point to note—the original cobblestones along Vestry Street, for example, have never had this sort of breakdown in the work such that that the cobbles are literally ripped out of their positions. My thought on that is that the new stones are all tumbled to clean them up, and because they’re rounded off during that process, they don’t nest well, and essentially roll around as they’re hit with the weight of passing vehicles, and eventually this pulverizes the grout or cement that holds them in place.

cobblestone Greenwich and VestryAt the moment, there’s a pylon in the middle of the street at the Laight Street intersection to warn the cars where a whole section of cobblestones has completely opened up. A major depression just south of Vestry is so deep that when heavy trucks hit it, our whole building shudders. The pattern of the cobbles down the middle strip of the street is deformed and shows the degree to which the failure is general, and not just in a couple of spots, I think.

So something’s wrong here, and our tax dollars seem to have bought a pretty, but short-lived, re-cobblestoned Greenwich Street.

The question is, what do we do about it? My guess is that this falls under the Department of Transportation, and I’ll try reaching out to see if they’re aware how bad the street is these days and whether there any plans to fix it. If you think/know otherwise, by all means chime in or contact me at tribecacitizen@gmail.com or 917-209-6473.

UPDATE: The DOT is aware of the problem and mulling options.

cobblestones Greenwich

 

3 Comments

  1. One contributing factor may be the severe winters during the last two years. The snow plows do a number on the cobblestone streets. If there’s a loose stone, it will be ripped up by the plow.

  2. Call 311. This is dangerous condition

  3. DOT’s “anti-cobblestone” policy is such that I doubt they have the technical competence anymore to manage the maintenance of Belgian Block pavers. This is tragic, given that once they did a great job of it, trucks and all. They need to decide to keep the skills in house and have a team that goes around the historic districts of Dumbo, West Village, Soho, and Tribeca doing the routine maintenance. And it doesn’t have to be a high tech team. They were once beautifully lain by labor that knew what it was doing.

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