How many more trucks?
Reopening the White Schoolhouse Road mine will without doubt increase the amount of heavy vehicle traffic on this historic town road. How large this increase will be can only be estimated at this point and the estimates have varied widely.
Looking at Red Wing’s 2017 DEIS, a document which they submitted to the NYS DEC, provides this estimate:
“Processed material will be sold in bulk to local communities from the existing mine as well as trucked to the Package Pavement bagging facility in Stormville. It is anticipated that approximately 400 tons (12 truck loads) per day will be trucked to the Package Pavement Stormville plant and the rest (8 to 38 truck loads) will be sold to drive up customers. These figures represent the best estimates at this time and are subject to variations in market demand. “
Let's do the math on these numbers. The 400 tons per day that will be sent to Package Pavement divided by 12 truck loads results in 33 1/3 tons per truck load. So this estimate must be for loads using only trailer dumps (which average 29 tons per load).
However, as documented in Special Use Permits from the 1980's to the present, Rhinebeck has restricted the trucks used for mining to 10-wheeled trucks, which are rated to reliably hold 13 tons. Rhinebeck has never permitted trailer dumps to be used for the mines. To get a better estimate of the increase in truck numbers, we need to see how many of these 10-wheeled trucks, instead of the 12 trailer dumps, would be needed to transport those 400 tons:
400 tons/13 tons per load = 31 truck loads
And the difference between the estimates is more than double ...
31 truck loads / 12 truck loads = 2.6
The number of truck loads, just for the 400 tons to be trucked to Stormville daily is underestimated by 2.6 times.
What does this tell us about future increases of traffic on our narrow, twisting, country road? We need to keep in mind that any estimates are likely underestimated by about 2 1/2 times. Here's one example:
From the Creighton Manning Engineering Updated Report, …”Based on the trip generation assessment, the mine will generate approximately 20 vehicles trips (10 entering and 10 exiting) during the AM peak hour and 10 vehicle trips (0 entering and 10 exiting) during the PM peak hour. This equates to approximately one vehicle every 3 to 4 minutes during the peak periods”. They go on further to state that the 20 AM peak hour trips will be “the arrival and departure of trucks hauling material”.
Based on the underestimation factor of 2.6, the 20 additional vehicle trips in the AM peak hour become 52 with a truck arriving or departing almost every minute.
That's a lot of trucks and a lot of heavy-vehicle traffic!