Expect Increased Vestal Parkway Traffic as B.U. Students Return
Binghamton-area motorists can expect the annual increase in traffic on the Vestal Parkway, around restaurants and shopping hotspots starting August 18 as students return to Binghamton University.
Authorities have reported for the past couple of weeks that some Binghamton University students have found their way back to Broome County, but the official “move-in day” starts Thursday morning.
According to news letters, advisories and other communications from Binghamton University, thousands of students will start to make themselves at home at the Vestal campus and in off-campus housing officially starting on the morning of August 18.
Thursday through Saturday, August 20, new first-year and transfer students are scheduled to move in while returning students are slated to move in on the afternoons of Friday, August 19 through Saturday, August 20 and all day on Sunday, August 21.
Students were encouraged to schedule their move-in time or be assigned random times by the University.
According to a release sent to local media, Binghamton University has announced over 3,000 first-year students, 900 transfer student and 1,500 new graduate students are expected to join the Binghamton University “campus community” this year.
Classes for around 18,600-students will begin on August 23.
Leading up to getting down to work, the University has a variety of Welcome Week activities plans including open houses, ice cream socials, networking events, arts and crats, tours of the library, bus trips to the Town Square Mall, corn hole games and, more serious: meetings with advisors to talk about scheduling and course details.
Motorists for the next several weeks should be aware there will be an increase in traffic and a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the area around the Vestal Campus. Add into that the construction of the Greenway shared pedestrian/bicycle path project along the Vestal Parkway going eastbound from east of Murray Hill Road to west of Clubhouse Road near University Plaza that has closed a lane. Even returning students could be confused by the new traffic patterns.
That area was the site of a deadly, head-on, wrong-way crash less than two weeks ago that left a Johnson City couple dead. It’s not known if the changes in traffic pattern contributed at all to that crash.
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