As first president of the Long Island State Parks Commission, he got what he wanted -- Jones Beach State Park, a bathing haven rivaled by few others along the eastern seaboard.
In creating his masterpiece, Moses had sweeping parkways built leading into Jones Beach, including the Meadowbrook, Southern State and Wantagh parkways. Those thoroughfares were and still are lined with lush forests. Moses' intent in the early days was to allow people, mostly city-dwellers escaping the summer heat, to marvel at the beauty of nature as they sped in their automobiles to the Atlantic Ocean.
Today, the parkways serve a dual purpose. They are at once entranceways to Jones Beach, as well as commuter arteries for Long Islanders. And they are prone to traffic congestion -- particularly the Southern State.
Now the New York State Department of Transportation, in its Long Island Transportation Plan 2000, proposes widening the Southern State and Meadowbrook (north of the Southern State), among numerous other roads across the Island. The state, however, provides few mass-transit alternatives, such as light-rail lines, to relieve congestion. In doing so, the DOT proposes repeating a fatal flaw in Moses' design for the parkways.
Over the decades, Robert Moses has been widely criticized for providing no mass-transit options in his parkways' blueprint. He is reported to have done so to keep poorer people, who could not afford cars, away from what he considered his pristine Jones Beach.
One must also recognize, though, that Long Island was a very different place than it is today. It was home primarily to farmers and fishermen who didn't need mass transportation.
Then came the 1940s, '50s and '60s, bringing burgeoning development, even over-development, and suburban sprawl. The parkways were never equipped, nor intended, to handle the post-World War II population boom.
During the 1960s, New York State widened the Southern State Parkway. A Nassau County pamphlet, which today seems amusingly naive, touted road widening as the solution to parkway traffic jams.
Making the Southern State bigger didn't work back then because a wider road simply brought more cars and even greater congestion.
The state DOT's current plan to expand the parkways and add bus/High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes in both directions is foolhardy in that it fails to recognize the parkways' historic inability to accommodate increasing traffic.
Moreover, the plan would decimate many of the parkways' green spaces, which offer a reminder of the Island's natural heritage and provide sound and exhaust buffers for residents who live near the parkways. Cement barriers would surely have to be erected in place of lost woodlands. In short, the parkways would become expressways.
Do we really want much of the South Shore to look like, sound like and smell like the Long Island Expressway?
As a member of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) is to vote on LITP2000 in the near future, probably in September or October. The council must approve the plan unanimously for it to move forward.
Suozzi should vote against LITP2000 and call on the DOT to rethink the plan so that it provides greater mass-transit alternatives.
Light-rail lines have breathed new life into cities across the country, such as Portland, Ore. and Seattle, Wash. Light rail is widely seen as America's transportation future.
In proposing LITP2000, the DOT remains mired in an outmoded mind-set that would spell disaster for the South Shore's fragile, ever-diminishing natural environment. Suozzi's vote will help determine the fate of much of Long Island's transportation network for the next 20 years and beyond. Write to him and tell him LITP2000 must be reworked to include mass transportation.
Otherwise, our parkways will likely become bigger parking lots than they already are.
How to write to Suozzi
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi is soon to vote on the New York State Department of Transportation's Long Island Transportation Plan 2000. Anyone wishing to write to him regarding the proposal may do so at: Hon. Thomas Suozzi, Nassau County Executive, 1 West St., Mineola, NY 11501.
