Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton and Nassau County Traffic Engineer Aryeh Lemberger attended the Manorhaven work session on May 10 to give residents and the board an update on the Manorhaven Boulevard project and listen to suggestions from the community. The $3 million project to transform Manorhaven Boulevard is set to include the repavement of the mile-long road along with other improvements discussed at the work session such as bus shelters, lighting, drainage, sidewalks, benches and more.
“I lived in Sands Point for a little while when I was right out of college, I lived on the preserve with a friend of mine and I always loved Manorhaven,” said DeRiggi-Whitton. “I think it’s a jewel. We’re going to make it, I think, better for business, safer and we really want to have everyone’s input. It’s going to be a process. We’re trying to do it right. It’s $3 million and the money is already in the capital budget and it’s been bonded for, so it’s there, ready to go.”
The repaving of Manorhaven Boulevard will use $1 million of the funds, while the additional $2 million will be available for other improvements. In order to inform the county’s repavement and other improvements, the county is conducting a Traffic and Parking Study and taking suggestions and concerns from residents.
“What we do basically is figure out how to help improve safety on county roads, but also we deal with beautification of the road, how to make it more attractive, usable and better for the community,” said Lemberger. “We’ve been asked to identify and correct any traffic safety issues along Manorhaven Boulevard. Part of the process is to collect data, analyze problems and form solutions and work with the community through all of this. We’re at the very early stages of this now.”
In order to understand the daily ongoings of Manorhaven Boulevard, the county set up cameras that recorded movement at the intersections, counted the number of pedestrians that were crossing the street and counted the number of people turning at each intersection last year. Along with the recordings, they have also requested accident records from the past few years from the Nassau County Police Department. Lemberger said that the cameras were vandalized, so the county had to scrap some of the data—however the county remobilized. While most of the data was collected during the off season, the county will continue to record intersections and gather data.
“Rather than create bike paths, I think overall traffic calming is more effective,” suggested resident Caroline DuBois. “I don’t know how many bikes you counted, but there are things like bump outs you can do instead. I think that’s kind of the state of the art solution.”
Deputy Mayor Priscilla von Roeschlaub explained she would love to see a nautical theme carried throughout the streetscape, as well as bus shelters placed at bus stops so residents can be covered on rainy days. Other residents suggested bus cutouts in the road, putting oil pollution absorbent materials in the catch basins to absorb the runoff and prevent it from going into the harbor, rain gardens, light posts, planters, new receptacles and hanging baskets.
“The county has to put in handicap accessible sidewalks, which means they are four feet wide, which is wider than the sidewalks we have right now,” said DeRiggi-Whitton. “The problem with that is we’re going to lose some of the trees. I’m a big tree hugger and I hate to do it. But if we’re going to put new sidewalks in, which we have to do, we have to do it how the county mandates it.”
Von Roeschlaub explained that new trees will be put in place of the old.
“The other little bit of good news, we also have Cow Neck on the schedule to be paved,” said DeRiggi-Whitton. “They’re not getting a whole streetscape, but it’s going to be great, so we’re going to have a really nice road from there to here and here to there. I would like to do things that would help business. One of the big things we talked about, we’ll have enough money to pave the [preserve] parking lot and make that really nice. I’d like to have a nice sign to let people know there is parking there should they want to frequent the stores.”
“That ties in with our whole effort with the native garden headed by Cornell Cooperative member Pat Valenti and the opening of the vegetable garden,” responded Manorhaven Mayor Jim Avena. “We eventually plan on having a path along the water, not as elaborate as our friends in Port North, but enough so residents can walk along the water.”
What did you think of this article? Share your thoughts with me by email at cclaus@antonmediagroup.com.
