Advocates for safer, more walkable streets came to Huntington Station Saturday to push changes in road design and speed to reduce the high number of vehicle crashes that occur every day in Suffolk County.
The Complete Streets Coalition and Vision Long Island presented a 10-point plan to improve safety. Standing in the north parking lot of the Long Island Rail Road station as traffic passed by, Eric Alexander and Alyssa Kyle outlined ways streets could be made safer.
“Crashes are up,” Alexander. who leads Vision Long Island, said. “We’re here to focus on how to reduce speed,” he said. “There’s a revitalization happening and community leaders have been pushing for revitalization but they also want pedestrian improvements.”
Jim McGoldrick, a Huntington Station resident, said, “In order for this to work for our community, we need businesses and everybody to come together amd make these streets safer. We need the state, federal government and the Town of Huntington to get involved with many of the different things we need here. One for instance is lighting. Lighting on Route 110 is poor, to say the least. And at this corner, Northridge, the community has been after the state and town and everybody that’s involved with this project to put a light here. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a serious car accident there. Another poor subject is signage.You have traffic going 30 MPH and you’ve got street signs that people can’t read. What happens is people stop short and people tailgate.”
Alexander and Kyle, along with several civic and Chamber of Commerce leaders who attended the press conference, advocated for seeking funds available now to improve roads now, focusing on areas around downtowns, schools, parks and train stations; using modern designs to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety; narrower street lanes to slow people down and shorten crossing distances in such places as intersections through use of curb buildouts and pedestrian refuge islands.
Suffolk County led the state in the number of fatal crashes in 2020.