Flashing lights installed at crosswalk on Nassau Boulevard

When Marge Kelly took over as president of the Community League of Garden City South in 2018, she vowed to get a crosswalk installed on Nassau Boulevard. Four months ago, her dream came true, and now the Town of Hempstead has even installed flashing lights at the crosswalk to alert drivers to slow down.

The boulevard is a two-way road, with one lane heading in each direction. There are no traffic signals between Cambridge and Terrace Avenues, Kelly explained, and if a driver is able to get through one, they will be able to pass the other. As a result, she said, when pedestrians try to cross the street from the parking lots on the northbound side to the businesses on the southbound side, “it’s like a game of Frogger.”

To make the situation worse, Kelly said, young children often cross the street to get to the Garden City Dance Studio. 

She pointed out this and other issues on the road to County Legislator Laura Schaefer, Assemblyman Ed Ra and Town of Hempstead Councilman Tom Muscarella last July, as she led them down Nassau Boulevard from Terrace Avenue to Princeton Road. 

Ra said he noticed a lot of people were crossing the street, and proceeded to work with Shaefer to secure funding for a crosswalk on the boulevard. It was installed back in January, as the county Department of Public Works continues to study traffic mitigation techniques for the street.

“It needed something,” Schaefer, a Republican from Westbury who commissioned the traffic study in 2018, said. “It’s a well-traveled road.”

But, Kelly said, people have continued to speed down Nassau Boulevard. So, she said, the Community League “pushed a little harder,” and got the Town of Hempstead to install flashing lights at the crosswalk earlier this month

“Now that we see them,” she said, “we hope that people will slow down.”

Ra noted he thinks they will help, as they have on other two-way roads, like Tulip Avenue, and Muscarella said the small business owners seem to appreciate the crosswalk, as well.