Monroe County will cut Bay Road from four lanes to three, starting June 15

Monroe County is converting Bay Road between Route 104 and Lake Road from four lanes to three, with wider shoulders and a center turning lane. Construction begins June 15 and is expected to run five to six weeks. Monroe County DOT engineers presented the final design at the Webster Town Board's May 21 workshop, about three weeks before work is scheduled to start.

Neighbors in subdivisions near the corridor, including Sunningdale Rise and Brookwood, have raised concerns about driveway access and traffic flow.

What the road will look like

The existing four-lane configuration, two lanes in each direction, will be replaced with three: an 11-foot northbound travel lane, an 11-foot two-way left turn lane in the center, and an 11-foot southbound travel lane. The existing road has four travel lanes with shoulders of 2 to 3 feet. Under the new design, the shoulders widen substantially.

The project begins near Brookwood Drive, north of the Route 104 intersection, which retains its four-lane configuration because of signal timing. The road diet runs from that point to Lake Road.

The wider shoulders are designed to accommodate bicycles, pedestrians, deliveries, and other uses outside the travel lanes. There are no dedicated bike lanes in the design.

Monroe County DOT says two-way traffic will be maintained throughout construction.

The project also includes storm sewer rehabilitation and curb replacement along the corridor.

Construction is contracted to Keeler Construction under a Monroe County contract. The project is scheduled to begin June 15 and take five to six weeks.

Why the county says it works

Bay Road carries approximately 15,000 vehicles per day, according to Monroe County DOT, a volume in the same range as other Monroe County corridors where road diets have already been completed, including Elmwood Avenue in Brighton, St. Paul Boulevard in Irondequoit, and Brighton-Henrietta Townline Road. The county presented those comparisons at the May 21 workshop to establish that Bay Road's traffic volume is within the range where this type of conversion has been proven to work.

On the safety side, county engineers cited a 3-year crash record of 45 total accidents on the affected stretch. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that four-to-three lane conversions reduce overall accidents by 19 to 47 percent. Monroe County said a similar road diet on St. Paul Boulevard reduced accidents 28 percent in the three years after it was completed and 81 percent over time. The 28 percent figure falls within the FHWA bracket. The 81 percent figure reflects long-term results on that specific project, not a general benchmark.

The county's May 21 presentation cited two fatal accidents on the corridor over the past 25 years. One of those fatalities, in 2004, was a rear-end collision at a left-turn movement, the type of conflict that a center turn lane is designed to eliminate.

The mechanism: fewer travel lanes mean fewer conflict points between vehicles moving in different directions. The center turn lane removes turning vehicles from the through lanes, which reduces rear-end collisions from vehicles stopping unexpectedly in traffic.

What to expect starting June 15

Construction is scheduled to begin June 15. The project is expected to run five to six weeks, putting completion in late July or early August 2026.

Residents who use Bay Road between Route 104 and Lake Road should expect lane reductions and construction delays during that period. Two-way traffic will be maintained throughout.

After construction, the road will operate under the new three-lane configuration permanently.

The Monroe County DOT presentation from the May 21 workshop is publicly available at websterny.gov/DocumentCenter/View/13587.

Bay Road is a county road, so Monroe County DOT, not the Webster Town Board, controls it and makes decisions about its configuration. How the design evolved, why a compromise plan was set aside, and why the Webster Town Board said it was the last to know is the subject of a separate Ledger report.

AI tools were used in drafting and research.