By: Doug Miller
The meeting was scheduled to take place at Long Beach High School, after the Herald's deadline. Expected to attend were representatives of Nassau County's Fourth Precinct, Superintendent of Schools Robert Greenberg and a spokesperson for County Executive Tom Suozzi.
Residents who live along the road, which is seven lanes wide and often appears to be speed-limit-optional, have been clamoring for change for years. Their suggestions have ranged from speed bumps to additional traffic lights to a landscaped center median. No consensus has emerged, and every suggestion must be weighed against emergency-response-time concerns. "I've gotten so many calls from people with suggestions, all of them good," said Ford on Tuesday. "I'm not a traffic engineer, but I find it fascinating."
Last November, then-legislator Michael Zapson held a similar forum with Gerbasi at Nickerson Beach, out of which came an ambitious three-stage plan to overhaul the road that called for restriping it and adding a bike lane as well as a greenery-filled median, such as the ones on Broadway in Long Beach, though without the parking.
But when Ford took over Zapson's seat, much of the plan was scrapped because of fire department concerns and, Ford said, the prohibitive cost.
Jamie Cohen, of the Lido Beach Civic Association, said she was disappointed that Ford had been "stalling" on the plan and that members of the community would have to repeat the complaints they voiced a year ago. "The [traffic] study was done over a year ago, with all the recommendations by the experts," said Cohen. "We should be getting a resolution by this point, not another discussion."
Liz Murdy, the association's vice president, added that community involvement was the only way to change the road's reputation as more of a highway than a street. Three weeks ago, an elderly man died from complications of injuries believed to have been the result of an accident on the boulevard.
Ford said that finding the funds for the street's overhaul will be just as tricky as finalizing a plan. "We'll be looking for areas to get funding from the federal government, the state and even the county, if we can convince the legislature and the county executive that it's important," Ford said. "To the DPW's credit, they get it that we don't have a lot of money."
Changes in the way the road is patrolled is another avenue Ford said she would like to explore. "The police issue about 1,000 summonses per year on Lido Boulevard," she said. "Meanwhile, the road handles 25,000 cars per day."
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