By:Scott Brinton
Area residents worried now over state plans to widen Southern State Parkway in 2015
Bellmore-Merrick civic activists say they're prepared to fight state plans to widen the Southern State Parkway by at least two lanes. Department of Transportation officials say a shovel won't get into the ground on the project before 2015. The activists, however, believe now is the time voice opposition to the project.
The Southern State expansion is one part of a multi-pronged, $5-billion approach to relieving Long Island's increasing traffic congestion, state officials say. The DOT outlined the entire proposal in the Long Island Transportation Plan 2000, which went to public hearings last spring.
The state wants to widen the Southern State along its inside median and then allocate the two new lanes for use by Rapid Transportation Vehicles, 24-passenger buses that would ferry people to and from park-and-rides.
Civic leaders and environmentalists, however, have cried foul, saying the parkway, which winds across the South Shore and cuts through a host of residential neighborhoods, cannot be widened on the inside median only. Its curves are too sharp -- and the inside median too narrow -- to do so.
Inevitably, they believe the Southern State Parkway would have to be straightened, and its outside medians, which forests and meadows now line, would be lost.
Area activists are organizing and lining up behind the Long Island Progressive Coalition, which has vowed to fight expansion of the Southern State.
Bill Christensen, president of the North Bellmore Civic Association, said, "If and when the time comes, we will certainly ally ourselves with whatever civic groups we need to" in order to oppose expansion plans.
Mary Ramo, president of the Friends of Fraser Park in North Merrick, recently attended a North Bellmore civic meeting as a first step toward forming such an alliance.
Of the Southern State expansion, Ramo said, "It's going to decrease property value, increase pollution."
She noted that, in North Merrick, several homes that hug the parkway are "already getting cars that go through their backyards" during accidents. She only sees the problem getting worse with a wider parkway.
Christensen fears that properties would have to be taken by right of eminent domain to enlarge the parkway. "We simply would lose an unspecified amount of property from schools and/or homes," he said.
The activists have garnered the support of county Legis. Norma Gonsalves, who is speaking out against the project. Gonsalves (R-East Meadow), who is up for reelection and whose legislative district falls on both sides of the parkway, said of the expansion plan: "I am adamantly opposed to it. I am tired of projects being developed [in which] communities are affected. Here, they're willing to take away property, displace homeowners and bring the parkway right into their face."
Lisa Tyson of North Bellmore is associate director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition and a member of the state's Technical Advisory Committee for Long Island Transportation Plan 2000. Tyson is a chief detractor of DOT plans to widen the Southern State.
She says enlarging the parkway represents a massive, five- to 10-year undertaking that isn't necessary. She believes the state would be wiser to put its money toward developing north-south, light-rail routes. Trolleys or jitney buses, she said, could connect with existing Long Island Rail Road lines that run east-west.
State officials say they are willing to hear people's concerns about the Southern State project. "We want the public comment," said Eileen Peters, regional DOT spokesperson. A second round of hearings is to be held in the near future, she said.
However, Richard Schary, a North Bellmore environmental activist, wonders how much public input the state will accept, as he believes the DOT hasn't been entirely candid about LITP 2000. In the plan, for example, "They never once mention widening the roads. The word they use again and again is improve," said Schary.
To learn more about this issue, go online to www.litp2000.com.
