Brookhaven to request $9 million from federal government for Vision Zero road safety plan
Westbound traffic on Sheep Pasture Road in Setauket makes a short jog onto Old Town Road before turning right to continue onto Sheep Pasture Road. The intersection is one of eight locations identified by Brookhaven Town as requiring highway safety improvements. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
Brookhaven Town officials plan to seek more than $9 million from the federal government to help fund the town’s Vision Zero highway safety improvement plan.
Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro, in a recent presentation to the town board, identified eight town roads that are most in need of safety upgrades, based on crash data and an online survey of Brookhaven residents.
The roads include streets in Bellport, Holbrook, Mastic, Miller Place, Rocky Point, Selden and Setauket, he said.
Data collected by a Florida-based consultant, NV5, showed 31 people died in a three-year period from 2021 to 2023 on Brookhaven Town roads, Losquadro said. During that same period, there were 191 crashes with serious injuries and 1,313 with minor injuries, he said.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- Brookhaven Town plans to seek $9.7 million from the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All program to fund the town's $12.1 million Vision Zero road safety program.
- Brookhaven's goal is to reduce fatal and serious accidents on town roads to zero by 2045.
- Town officials identified eight roads most in need of improvements, including streets in Bellport, Holbrook, Mastic, Miller Place, Rocky Point, Selden and Setauket.
The town launched its Vision Zero road safety improvement program last year. Its goal is to get traffic fatalities and serious injuries down to zero by 2045.
Losquadro said he plans to request $9.7 million from the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All program, a project of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The program has doled out about $2.9 billion to more than 1,600 communities across the country over the past three years, according to the federal DOT website.
'A lot of public feedback'
The overall cost of the town program is about $12.1 million, with the town funding the remaining $2.4 million, Losquadro said.
“We got a lot of public feedback, which was wonderful, not only to give us the information we needed, but [it] really bolsters our efforts and makes that application that much stronger,” Losquadro told the town board on June 12. “We are well ahead of the curve.”
In an email, DOT spokesperson Yael Even said the next round of grants will be announced in the fall.
Across Long Island, traffic crashes killed more than 2,100 people over the decade ending in 2023, according to official data compiled by the Albany-based Institute for Traffic Safety Management and Research, Newsday has previously reported.
Brookhaven's Vision Zero plan would target town roads only, so that would not include dangerous locations such as the intersection of Nicolls Road and State Route 347 in Stony Brook, which saw 14 serious-injury and fatal crashes from 2014 to 2023, Newsday has reported.
Safety improvements could include measures such as enhanced speed enforcement, electronic signs flashing drivers' speeds, encouraging bicyclists not to ride against traffic, child safety seat checks and providing videos to educate the public, Losquadro said.
His list of dangerous roads were: Station Road, Bellport; Union Avenue, Holbrook; Mastic Road, Mastic; North Country Road near Miller Place Road, Miller Place; Route 25A business district, Rocky Point; Old Town Road at Sheep Pasture Road in Setauket; and two sections of Boyle Road in Selden, including areas near State Route 25 and Hawkins Road.
Residents leery of one road
Old Town Road in Setauket has a bad reputation among residents, said Peter St. Germaine, a hamlet resident who studies road safety issues for the Three Village Civic Association.
The narrow street, in a residential area with hundreds of homes, “is wide, fast and curvy, so people drive fast on it notoriously,” St. Germain said in a phone interview.
“It’s near [Ward Melville High School], so it gets a lot of parents traffic” dropping off kids at school and then returning home, he said, adding that bicycle lanes on the road, in his opinion, leave cyclists vulnerable.
He would like to see a barrier between cars and bicycles.
“It’s one of those roads where it has a quasi bike lane," he said. “We want to separate the cars from the people, but we aren’t really seeing any of that.”
Brookhaven Councilwoman Jane Bonner, whose district includes Miller Place and Rocky Point, said one of the challenges facing officials is that many Brookhaven roads were laid out during the town's agricultural era a century ago and were not designed for suburban life.
“One of the No. 1 calls to my office is speeding, and people want stop signs," Bonner said. "Much of what we discuss as colleagues, and [that] I discuss with our partners in law enforcement, is correcting bad habits.”
Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.
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