On Thursday, October 1, state highway crews unveiled a pair of blue signs on the Route 2 bridge over Route 22 in Petersburgh. They read “Bridge Dedicated to Robert Bornt.”
Bornt spent 22 years with the state Department of Transportation, rising to highway maintenance supervisor for this corner of Rensselaer County. He was also the kind of volunteer small towns run on: chief of the Hoosick Falls fire department, a member of the rescue squad, a substitute school bus driver, and regional president of the state employees’ union, CSEA. On May 29, 2025, he was struck by a vehicle while working in a DOT work zone on Route 7 in Pittstown. He died the next day.
Governor Hochul signed the law naming the bridge for him this summer. At Thursday’s ceremony, DOT Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez was joined by State Senator Jake Ashby, Assemblyman Scott Bendett, CSEA president Mary E. Sullivan and PEF president Wayne Spence, along with Bornt’s family, DOT colleagues and firefighters from across the northern towns.
Pittstown is our next-door neighbor, and Route 7 is the road many of us take to Bennington. The dedication is a memorial, and it is also the plainest possible reminder: when you see the cones and the flaggers, slow down and put the phone away. The person in the orange vest has a fire company and a family waiting for them too.
Source: the New York State Department of Transportation’s October 1, 2026 release on the dedication ceremony, with background from coverage of the May 2025 crash. Details of the crash investigation are the State Police’s and were not part of Thursday’s announcement.
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