Local Hotbutton Issues: Long Island's Increased Commuter Demands on Public Transportation and Highways

We are experiencing technical difficulties while working on the development of mass transit to match the community needs for buses, trains and other forms of public transportation. Please bear with us while we work to better serve you with your transportation needs. Perhaps you needed to read this, fellow commuter, well, here it is, in writing, for you to read.

The Hicksville Railroad station is a hub of activity, for commuters via rail, via city suburban bus, as well as by the new minibuses that pick up commuters from the railroad station run by LIALC, the Town of Oyster Bay, Laidlaw, as well as other companies. Some of these buses look like giant, multi-passenger SUV's, with luxury seats as comfortable and as spacious as the ones on the commuter rail system. We need more town buses like these in addition to the suburban buses, which run between 6 am and 7 pm (some lines run later in the evening) during the business week, in order to reduce the multi-hour commute time for people who rely on public transportation. What we need here on Long Island is a $5.00 express bus system, which is something that there is a demand for.

There are signs on the Long Island Railroad that declare that there will be one million more people living in New York City in the proximate future. This many more people will mean that there will be more people escaping to Long Island on the weekend, as well as more of a need for mass transit within the city itself, thus more people will be needed to commute to New York City in order to drive the buses, conduct the subways, captain the ferries, as well as do maintenance and repair on the vehicles, dispatch the vehicles, offer customer assistance, plus prepare, and distribute the schedules for the various forms of mass transit.

The roads, the highways of the New York metropolitan area are already filled with traffic from 6am or earlier until 10pm or later. More people in the area, driving more cars will create a need for wider roads, more parking spaces, more traffic direction, more automobile mechanics, more parking garages, more school crossing guards, more traffic signals, more parking meters, more parking meter attendants, and more. Obviously, we are going to need more buses, more bus lines, more subways, as well an improved commuter rail system, at the minimum, to meet the demands of all these commuters. People in New York City are also going to want more express bus lines, more jitneys out to New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island and Connecticut.

Of course, not everyone is going to want to be taking public transportation, otherwise known as mass transit, in fact, enough people are going to want the freedom and independence of the large sleeping berth called the SUV that the roads, parkways and our interstate freeway is going to be crowded enough that driving is going to continue to become more uncomfortable for people in the New York metropolitan area. This will drive a significant and vociferous minority of people into telecommuting, and infrequent visits to the office, in order to get away from the 40 to 50 mile long commuter traffic jam called the Long Island Expressway, as well as other roads like it. As the roads become more dangerous to navigate, more people will want to leave the driving to the professionals.

It is generally known that a lot of people with official residences in New York City who drive SUV's have a tendency to live in their vehicle, which may or may not be larger, have more leg room, and a better audio system than their official living space does. It is also generally known that home heating bills during the winter months for many homes in the metro New York area is between $750 and $1000 per month, and upwards. Thus, someone who lives in their SUV vehicle, who uses $50 - $100 per week in gasoline is using no more gasoline than your average home dweller who stays home, and does not commute. Thus, automatically labeling someone who drives an SUV as being anti-environmentalist is not necessarily accurate. However, SUV's do take up more space than ordinary cars do, on the roadway. Ordinary automobiles are uncomfortable nap time spaces, commuting by car is getting to the point where pulling off the road and taking a rest break at a neighborhood fast food parlor or rest area during rush hour traffic is frequently advisable, if commuting must be done by car.

What is factual is that these vehicles are wide enough that extra space is needed on some roadways in order for traffic in residential areas to get through. Some roadways cannot fit two parked SUV's and two SUV's driving through in opposite directions. Unfortunately, this includes some major north-south roads around Long Island. Our north-south roadways are lacking more than they did twenty years ago due to more vehicles being on the road, as well as more of these consumer automotive units being larger vehicles. Ride-share and carpooling helps to ease the commuter crunch, and already is, to a lesser degree.

Commuters themselves are using the available railroad stations parking lots at Hicksville, Bethpage, Farmingdale, Wyandanch, and Deer Park railroad stations, as well as the park and ride lots to capacity. The park and ride lots at exits 49 and 52 of the Long Island Expressway are completely full of vehicles, and need to be expanded. There is a plan in committee to have an expanded rest area at exit 52 of the Long Island Expressway, eventually.

There is another solution called boating or ferry boat, to the commute, something that is already taking place at Hunters Point as well as at Staten Island. Commuter ferries could easily leave from Port Washington, Oyster Bay or Glen Cove, Long Island; to go to someplace such as Astoria, Queens; Rye, New York; or Stamford, Connecticut. This is an idea that has been ignored for years in favor of expensive construction projects such as bridges and tunnels that were voted down on a number of attempts to pass. Some existing ferries allow people to take their vehicle across the Long Island Sound, such as the one at Port Jefferson, that goes to Bridgeport, Connecticut.

There are a lot of people who live on Long Island who need to communicate to their local legislators their concerns with the highways as well as with carpooling, van pooling, mass transit, commuter rails, and railroad parking lots or park and ride lots. We need to convince our people in Albany as well as in Washington DC that we are willing to back these people entirely with their efforts, in order to make these efforts our efforts. We need to improve our commute routes so that we waste less time and gasoline sitting in traffic during our day, somehow. What some of this is dependent on is what is in the budget of the Metropolitan Transit Authority to work with for improvement projects.