By Laura Lane
The Herald recently toured the station with civic leaders, and found cracked stairs and rusted stairway walls. Advertisements littered the parking lot, and the smell of urine was pungent in certain areas on the platform.
The stench at the station
The ticket office, which also serves as a waiting room, is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Derek Donnelly, president of the Merrick Gables Homeowners Association, believes this may be part of the problem. "The ticket office is [often] closed, and that's where the bathrooms are, so people urinate outside," said Donnelly. "The platform smells. They don't power-wash it."
Sam Zambuto, an MTA Long Island Rail Road spokesman, said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority sends a hot-water spray-wash team to Merrick once a month to clean the station. "This year we've visited the station 15 times, more than two times the regular power-washing for that station," said Zambuto. "The station is cleaned twice a day during the day, at which time the bathrooms are cleaned and mopped, as is the ticket office."
Donnelly said that cleaning the restrooms doesn't get rid of the puddles of urine on the platform and near the elevator. ³At night the trains are packed, and many people have been drinking,² he said. ³The walls on the stairs are vertical hideaways from Sunrise Highway and are used by them as a urinal.²
Barry Fox, president of the Merrick Park Home Owners Association, says he can¹t understand why people continue to urinate outside when MTA police are downstairs. "The police are right underneath where these people are urinating," said Fox. "Put someone upstairs and write up the violations."
Zambuto said that the MTA police do patrol the platforms at night, though he declined to say how often. He added that the upstairs waiting and elevator areas, where Donnelly said there is often urine, are mopped once a month.
Unsafe steps?
Chris Rotella of Merrick has taken the LIRR to Manhattan since 1988. He believes the station's appearance has improved, but he worries about the steps. "They should redo all of the steps fully," said Rotella. "It's dangerous. They keep patching them, and when the water gets in between the concrete, they crumble. I don't really worry about myself on them, but I do worry about elderly people."
MTA officials are aware of cracked steps and plan to repair them, though Zambuto could not say when. As for the rust and cracks on the stairway walls, Zambuto believes that the structures are safe and, he said, "structurally sound." Beginning in May 2007, the MTA plans to replace the stairways.
Litter in the lot
Fliers in the train station lots also irk civic leaders. Fox said that businesses place ads under the windshield wipers of parked cars.
The Town of Hempstead is responsible for the station parking lots. "I don't know anyone that's been fined by the town's inspectors," said Fox. "As long as you don't ticket these guys, it will continue."
Fox would like the town to follow New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's enforcement of state law, which prohibits the placement of handbills and other advertisements on the windshield, under the wipers or on the rear windows of cars. The city fines businesses $75 per handbill.
"If the public-safety officer sees people putting the fliers on the cars, he takes their name and then has them remove the fliers," said Susie Trenkle, town spokeswoman. She added that the officers patrol the lot once a week.
When asked whether the business advertised on a flier would be penalized, Trenkle said no, because the town has no way of knowing whether the person placing an ad on a car works for that business. "If the safety officer has to do this more than once, they'll issue a summons, but that hasn't been a problem this year," Trenkle said.
Fox would like the town to be more aggressive. "That policy is setting up a failure,² he said. ³If you see fliers on all of the cars, nobody is that ridiculous to put out that many fliers for someone they don't work for. You don't have to see somebody commit a robbery to arrest them. The flier has a phone number and address on it. We're not talking about hate literature here; we're talking about advertising."
Rotella said he often finds advertisements waiting for him when he returns home at night. "The ads are put on my car," he said, adding that he finds them more often in the summer. "I really hate it."
Comments about this story? LLane@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 236.
