Moaning about Merrick Road

The Town of Hempstead has at least temporarily backed away from a plan to eliminate a few parking spaces on the north side of Merrick Road, near Grand Avenue.

The proposal came in answer to complaints from drivers who parked on the north side of the street and later discovered that their side-view mirrors had been sliced off or their cars had been sideswiped by passing vehicles.

Because Merrick is a Nassau County road, the problem was initially seen as the county’s responsibility. “People have complained to my office and elsewhere about mirrors coming off, and the narrowness of the lane,” said County Legislator Laura Curran, whose district includes Baldwin. “I passed that complaint on to the DPW” — the county Department of Public Works.

The plan, at first, was to eliminate several parking spaces on the north side of the road. “The county is working to finalize a traffic study to improve safety along Grand Avenue in Baldwin, which included looking at safety at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Merrick Road,” county spokeswoman Mary Studdert wrote in an email. “Through this process, we discovered that the lanes of travel on Merrick Road east of the intersection are not wide enough, and do not meet current design guidelines.

“We need to bring the lanes into conformance, and there is no option to widen the road itself,” Studdert continued. “We must work within the available roadway width, so the only option is to redistribute the space by either removing one lane of travel or removing one on-street parking shoulder.

“The area of immediate concern is at the westbound approach to the intersection, where we identified how much of the parking shoulder would need to be removed to redistribute that space to a travel lane.”

Complicating the matter is that “Nassau County does not have jurisdiction over on-street parking regulations,” Studdert said. So, she said, “[W]e asked the town to consider the request.”