Cell Phone's Dead

ALBANY, N.Y. - A Brooklyn man's death on the Northway, frozen 100 miles north of Albany on the side of a major highway, is a tragic failure of environmentalists, developers and engineers to properly manage New York's wild areas.

Rather than hammer out a practical solution to providing cell phone access to the nearly 70 mile corridor that begins at Exit 28 (although cell service can be spotty all the way to Exit 22), lawmakers failed to make the necessary compromises and let the issue stagnate.

Phone service in the corridor used to be provided by emergency access phones, spaced every two miles on each side of the road. When our family minivan broke down in the early 1990s, my father hiked nearly a mile to reach the phone. Less than an hour later, my grandparents arrived, shepherding the family to safety in their station wagon.

The phones fell into disrepair and were removed several years ago. With cell service not available, there's no way for a stranded motorist to alert the authorities that help is needed.

It was only a matter of time before someone wound up trapped, and unfortunately, dead.

I don't support extending cell phone service to the entire Adirondack region. It would be an unnecessary intrusion into a place designated "Forever Wild" in the state constitution. People who venture into the string of mountains known as the High Peaks need to be prepared and self-reliant.

But the same burden cannot be applied to people transversing the Adirondacks as a means of traveling between New York and Montreal. All sorts of people must go through this area - the old, infirm and disabled included - and we must provide state of the art communications technology.

The Adirondack Park Agency approved 33 cell towers, each 38 feet tall, to provide service to the area. Cell phone companies balked at the cost, and wanted to install a few much larger towers. This is a mistake; the small towers are already approved and should be completed quickly.

As the Schenectady Gazette says in today's (unavailable online) editorial, "Time to resurrect that plan and figure out a way to get those towers built before another winter passes!"