Babylon becomes 1st LI town with 'complete streets'

The Town of Babylon adopted a resolution Wednesday making it the first municipality on Long Island to have a "complete streets" policy, with the aim of making the town's roadways more pedestrian-, bicyclist- and handicap-friendly.

Road projects starting in 2011 will incorporate designs such as wider sidewalks, curb-cuts and crosswalks, said Supervisor Steve Bellone. The streets also will be environmentally sustainable, with a goal of minimizing adverse effects, such as storm water runoff.

"It's really a change in a way of thinking," Bellone said. "Instead of auto-centered design, we're thinking about all roadway users."

Ryan Lynch, senior planner and Long Island coordinator for the nonprofit Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said the policy works to accommodate everyone.

"For a long time our roads were built strictly to move automobile traffic as fast as possible through areas with very little to no amenities for any other users of the road such as pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users." Even if they have amenities, he said, the roads often remain "an inhospitable environment" for children and the elderly.

Long Island has some of the most dangerous roads in the region for pedestrians, Lynch said. According to Tri-State's analysis of federal traffic fatality data, 91 pedestrians were killed in Suffolk from 2006 to 2008. In Babylon itself, there were 17 pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in that period.

Lynch said Babylon is the first municipality on Long Island to adopt a complete street policy. According to the National Complete Streets Coalition, Babylon joins only three other municipalities in New York - Buffalo, Erie County and Binghamton - to pass such a policy. The state Senate passed the bill last month but it awaits action in the Assembly."We're trying to show the Assembly that there's an urgent need and demand for this on a local level," Lynch said. "The Town of Babylon doing this is a huge first step in that."

The town will begin training highway engineers in complete street concepts and send out a request for proposals to establish a master plan to examine how those principles can be applied throughout the town, Bellone said. He said he does not anticipate cost increases related to the changes and said that while some designs may cost more, others - such as narrowing roads - will cost less due to less asphalt use.