The Parkway Bridge: A comprehensive history of the infamous Syracuse bridge

Ahead of CNY Central's live 90-minute Parkway Bridge Town Hall event this Thursday at 5 p.m. on CBS 5, here is a look at a comprehensive history of the infamous Onondaga Lake Parkway Bridge.

MORE:CNY Central to host Parkway Bridge Town Hall Thursday on CBS 5 at 5 p.m.

What is it?

The Onondaga Lake Parkway Bridge is a truss bridge that carries the St. Lawrence Subdivision railway freight line owned by CSX Transportation over a segment of New York State Route 370, known as the Onondaga Lake Parkway.

The bridge's history

The bridge was constructed in 1871 — originally carrying the rail line over what was then the Oswego Canal. By the early 1900s, the canal was filled in and eventually, NY Route 370 was constructed on the former canal bed as a scenic route along the newly established Onondaga Lake Park.

In the 19th century, Onondaga Lake Parkway was originally established as a tourist attraction, with beaches, resorts and amusement parks.

By the 1890s, there were eight amusement parks and resorts on the lakeshore, leading some to call it the “Coney Island of Central New York.”

City leaders in the era immediately following World War I were keenly aware of the potential draw of Onondaga Lake property. In the 1919 plan, they wrote of the "advantages to be gained and the unusual opportunities possessed by Syracuse for having a waterfront park on Onondaga Lake." In the 1920s, Joseph Griffin, the secretary of the Onondaga County Park and Regional Planning Board introduced and pushed for the development of a parkway to connect the City of Syracuse and the Village of Liverpool that would include park land and athletic facilities.

Griffin was “outraged by the destruction of the Lake,” and wished to revive the Syracuse Planning Commission’s 1919 proposal of a boulevard around the lake by designing a new parkway, where a low-speed road would allow visitors to easily pull off to visit attractions or take in the view.

After World War II, however, that began to change. There was new industry and employers like General Electric on Electronics Parkway expanded, employing thousands of workers — leading residents of Syracuse to move north, taking their families to suburbs like Liverpool.

The Onondaga Lake Parkway evolved from a scenic boulevard full of activities into a convenient, speedy shortcut for commuters and truck drivers.

By the 1950s, the first reported collisions of commercial vehicles into the bridge's 10-foot-9-inch deck occurred — despite a long-standing commercial vehicle ban.

The Megabus crash

There have been hundreds of cases of trucks and tractor-trailers hitting the low bridge, but only one has resulted in fatalities.

On Sept. 11, 2010, a 13-foot high double-decker bus owned by Megabus, an intercity bus service, hit the 10-foot-9-inch high bridge, resulting in the deaths of four passengers.

The crash killed Deanna Armstrong, an 18-year-old Camillus native, Kevin Coffey, a 19-year-old Philadelphia college student from Kansas, Benjamin Okorie, a 35-year-old Malaysian preacher and Ashwani Mehta, a 34-year-old information technology specialist from India.

The double-decker bus was carrying 28 passengers in total and was being operated by 59-year-old John Tomaszewski of Yardville, New Jersey.

Tomaszewski suffered a traumatic brain injury during the crash and broke his jawbone, while 20 passengers suffered injuries — nine of them critically.

The bus was traveling from Philadelphia to Toronto and had scheduled stops in Syracuse and Buffalo. Tomaszewski missed the stop at the Regional Transportation Center in Syracuse. Then-Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh said Tomaszewski most likely took the wrong exit toward the Parkway, instead of the Park Street exit coming from 81 Northbound.

At the time of the deadly crash, there were approximately a dozen signs leading up to the bridge to warn trucks of the low bridge, some with flashing yellow lights.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick sought charges of criminally negligent homicide for each passenger who was killed, "This is not some 20-year-old that rented a U-Haul to take his furniture back home. This is a trained driver who has the lives of 25 to 30 people in his hands in driving that bus," Fitzpatrick said.

In Onondaga County Court, Tomaszewski was indicted by a grand jury on four counts of criminally negligent homicide for his role in the crash, one for each of the four passengers killed, as well as one count of failing to obey traffic devices.

Judge Anthony Aloi dismissed the defense's motion to throw out the case, ruling that there was enough evidence to proceed. Preliminary discussions looked at possibly striking a deal rather than taking the case to trial but ultimately, Tomaszewski waived his right to a jury trial and his bench trial was set for Feb. 21, 2012.

John Tomaszewski told deputies he listening to directions from his personal GPS just before crashing into the railroad bridge, but investigators said he was looking at his GPS when he drove into the bridge.

Assistant District Attorney Chris Bednarski argued Tomaszewski was solely responsible for the incident, while the defense said some blame belongs to CSX, the New York State Department of Transportation and the federal government for not improving the safety of the bridge — which has a history of violent crashes.

Seven days after the trial's onset, Judge Anthony Aloi found Tomaszewski not guilty. After the judge made his ruling, Tomaszewski told former CNY Central Jessica Cain it was a tragic accident that will affect him for the rest of his life.

In October 2010, Megabus passenger Candice Burks filed a lawsuit against Tomaszewski, Olympia Trails Bus Co. and Coach USA — which owned and operated the vehicle. The suit sought more than $50,000, arguing Burks suffered permanent physical and cognitive injuries as a result of the crash.

In 2012, Monika Mehta, the widow of Ashwani Mehta, settled her lawsuit against Megabus for $2.2 million. The settlement amount was not supposed to be made public but was spelled out in a federal court document in Philadelphia, according to syracuse.com.

In August 2011, Megabus passenger Lo Wah Chu filed a lawsuit against Megabus, arguing a Megabus-issued GPS could have prevented the crash that left her with catastrophic brain and spinal injuries.

A lawsuit brought by passenger Carl Kerr against Megabus was also settled.

Two years after being found not guilty, Tomaszewski suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak or walk. In 2015, Tomaszewski passed away at a New Jersey nursing home at 63 years old. His wife Valerie said her late-husband was plagued by guilt for his role in the crash.

MORE: Widow of driver in 2010 fatal Parkway Megabus crash speaks out, 'nothing has changed'

Timeline of truck crashes

*This is not a comprehensive list, but a timeline of the bridge crashes CNY Central has reported on.

The latest bridge hit occurred on Tuesday, May 2 when a Penske rental box truck scraped underneath the bridge, causing extensive damage to the vehicle and resulting in 14 tickets being issued to the driver by the Onondaga County Sheriff's Office.

The Politics

2010

Days after the fatal Megabus crash, then County Executive Joanie Mahoney met with the state's Department of Transportation's then-acting commissioner Stanley Gee to discuss short- and long-term solutions.

CSX was at risk of being implicated in the Megabus crash based on the premise that the company had known about the dangers of the low bridge for decades and had done nothing about it. Onondaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick said he expected the DOT to install more safety devices, and said it's "unacceptable" for either the state or CSX to delay action any longer.

CSX issued this statement in response, "CSX continues to cooperate with the district attorney's office as it reviews the circumstances of the tragic accident of September 11, 2010. CSX believes that it has acted properly and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations relating to the railroad bridge over the Onondaga Lake Parkway."

The Grand Jury in the Megabus crash case recommended lowering the speed limit by ten miles per hour on the parkway and building a pull-off lane, giving truck drivers one last chance to get off the road, but neither were adopted.

2011

The DOT told CNY Central in May of 2011 that an electronic low bridge warning system was scheduled to be installed that summer. The system would electronically detect when a truck approached the bridge and then set off a series of lights and possibly a horn. While waiting for the installation of the proposed system, state highway crews painted warnings on the pavement in an attempt to alert motorists about the low bridge.

On May 26, 2011, the DOT released its study of traffic safety on the Onondaga Lake Parkway and recommended that commercial vehicles be banned from the Parkway and the installation of a detection system that will alert drivers when their vehicle is too tall to fit under the overpass. The DOT also reported several new implementations it made in an effort to cut down on Parkway crashes:

• Extending the 30 MPH speed limit coming out of Liverpool by 900 feet
• Adding electronic speed signs
• Asking local police agencies to step up traffic patrols
• Adding center median rumble strips to alert drifting drivers
• Removing brush around the various bridge height warning signs
• Painting Low Bridge Ahead warnings on the Parkway pavement
• Adding a traffic camera near the bridge
  

The warning system was installed in October 2011 and after two years since its installation, only one truck had hit the bridge. A laser was mounted on opposite sides of Route 370 and two vehicle presence detectors were placed on the road. If the truck height breaks the laser beam, a message flashes on signs to warn the driver to stop before the bridge and alert 911 to help them turn around. Data CNY Central obtained showed that after the system was installed, as of July 2019, more than 400 drivers were alerted to prevent crashes.

In September, New York Sen. Charles Schumer called on the federal government to investigate the rising number of overpass collisions involving trucks that are led onto roads where they are banned. Schumer said he would ask the U.S. Department of Transportation to issue nationwide standards for GPS devices for commercial vehicles, "If you are a local trucker here in Central New York, you know what highways to use. But if you are coming from Pennsylvania or you're coming from Ohio or you're coming from New York City, you may not know that Onondaga County has overpasses that are low. And when GPS sent you on those [highways], you go, and then your truck gets caught and crashes."

On Sept. 15, 2011, the DOT officially banned commercial vehicles from the Onondaga Lake Parkway. On October 5, Sen. John DeFrancisco sent a letter to Commissioner of Transportation Joan McDonald asking the DOT to reconsider, writing that the ban "is overkill, to put it kindly." The ban would prohibit all vehicles carrying commercial plates, which includes everything from tractor-trailers and buses to local delivery vans and many pickup trucks.

2012

Despite protests from legislators and business owners, commercial vehicles were banned from the parkway effective Dec. 9, 2012.

2016

In July 2016, a project was proposed by County Executive Joanie Mahoney and Chairman of the Onondaga County Legislature Ryan McMahon to install a more permanent warning system that would alert large vehicles of CSX bridge's low clearance. The project was proposed to begin construction in 2018 and be completed by 2019. The project never came to fruition.

2019

In 2019, the DOT evaluated the warning system along Onondaga Lake Parkway and compared it with technology that has become available since the system was put in place in 2011. The DOT was also looking into using the $25 million of state funding set aside to help prevent “bridge strikes” on New York parkways to make changes along Onondaga Lake Parkway to prevent future crashes.

In 2019, there appeared to be a possible move on the table to raise the CSX bridge, with NYSDOT explaining that CSX was open to the alteration, but only if the state shouldered the cost. The proposal never gained traction behind closed doors.

Despite the increase in warning signs and detection systems, most accident reports involving truckers hitting the bridge have indicated the driver disregarded warnings and signs about the low height of the bridge.

2020

In 2020, longtime truck driver Mike Carter, a Baldwinsville native, suggested, "Municipalities that govern this bridge, need to write letters to the GPS companies, Rand McNally, Garmin, Google Maps, what have you, all of them. They can make this road disappear."

Carter's plan to make the parkway "disappear" from commercial GPS devices picked up steam after he called Village of Liverpool Chief of Police Don Morris, requesting that Onondaga Lake Parkway be designated a non-truck route. The suggestion was forwarded to the project manager for the parkway project, Cindy Bell and even Rep. Pam Hunter on the state assembly's Transportation Committee got involved.

"We're also having conversations about the restructure of the Onondaga Lake Parkway itself too, so that may aid in actually a lot of the commercial truck-driving going down the parkway, but we also want to make sure that the people who live in the village, in and around that area are being heard as well," Hunter said. "It is a priority. I'm committed to, you know, having this conversation and facilitating this moving forward."

2023

Rep. Bill Magnarelli, the head of the Transportation Committee, said that there is nothing more the state can do beyond the dozens of warning signs that lead up to the bridge heading in both directions, pointing out that commercial tractor-trailers aren't even allowed on the parkway to begin with.

Despite efforts made by local officials, law enforcement and advocates for decades, there has yet to be a long-term solution to prevent trucks and tractor-trailers from hitting the Onondaga Lake Parkway Bridge.

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