Atlantic Beach drives toward upgraded road safety

Speeding on Park Street, the main thoroughfare that runs through Atlantic Beach is not a new problem, however in the past few years the issue has become more pronounced and spurred roughly 70 residents to hold a rally at the intersection of Albany Boulevard and Park Street, the gateway to the village, in November.

Though the speed limit was lowered from 30 mph to 25 on the two-way four-lane 1.5-mile stretch of Park Street from the Atlantic Beach Bridge to Long Beach speeding remains a common occurrence.

“What’s negative news is the absence of any visible initiatives to calm traffic on Park Street, despite our quite significant rally last November,” Kevin Kelly stated in an email.

Atlantic Beach Mayor George Pappas acknowledged that “nothing has happened” since the November rally, he said. “We are trying to get speed indicators, permanent ones from the county’s Highway Division and temporary ones through Denise Ford’s office,” Pappas said.

Ford, the county legislator whose district includes Atlantic Beach, said that Atlantic Beach will get the temporary then the permanent speed indicators, noting the speeding problem could possibly be mitigated by having the traffic signals along Park Street timed properly and installing preemptors that signals when a vehicle is at a traffic light.

She also pointed to the expected redesign of Park Street that would narrow the roadway with a two-way bicycle lane and add a traffic signal by Capri Drive near the Water Club houses in East Atlantic Beach and include supplemental drainage to reduce flooding that was part of the original storm recovery plan. That could be in the fall, Ford said.

In an effort to improve cyclist safety -- a male bicyclist was seriously injured after being hit by a car on the Atlantic Beach Bridge last August -- and there have been other incidents, Kelly and others proposed dedicating space on the bridge’s six lanes to bicycles, scooters and roller skaters.

The idea is to place cones or other barriers along the lane closest to the existing walkway as a protection along the space. Three lanes could be simultaneously designated using signs or traffic signals for vehicles traveling south in the morning and north in the late afternoon and evening, Kelly said. “That would still leave two lanes for motor vehicles traveling in the opposite directions and would not result in any increased congestion,” he stated in a letter to Vincent Grasso, the executive director of the Nassau County Bridge Authority. The space is proposed for May to October.

“We were told that the walkway is too narrow to lawfully permit cycling – even though far more cyclists currently ride their bikes along the walkway rather than obeying the posted order to walk their bikes,” Kelly wrote in his letter.

Proposals have been presented for bike lanes, Grasso said. “According to our engineers, based on the width of the bridge that goes from 10 lanes to six lanes it is not safe enough for bike lanes,” he said, adding that the bridge authority’s lawyers, applying the engineers’ advice, agreed.

Grasso noted that the grid design of the bridge could cause control trouble for bike tires. One arm on each side of the tollbooths was shortened to accommodate cyclists, he said. Cyclists must walk their bikes across the bridge.

Have an opinion on Atlantic Beach road safety? Send letter to jbessen@liherald.com.