Dangerous Roads newsletter: Going fast vs. being safe is a perpetual Long Island debate

Few things have played as large a role in forming Long Island's identity as the LIE.

I had that realization while recently brushing up on the history of the Long Island Expressway for an upcoming NewsdayTV Picture This segment. The 70-mile long roadway was intended to improve life on Long Island by facilitating four C's: commerce, commuting, connectivity and congestion relief.

While it accomplished some of those goals, it also helped reinforce another couple of C's that Long Island is well known for: car culture.

What made the LIE so alluring when master builder Robert Moses thought it up a century ago remains one of Long Island’s greatest curses — the promise of getting from point A to point B in a straight line as quickly as possible.

More than 50 years after the LIE was finally finished (11 years late and $80 million over budget, or $636 million in today's dollars), the expressway mentality remains, and is an impediment to efforts to rein in fast driving. For as many hours as the LIE has saved drivers over the years, it's also cost hundreds of lives with its invitation for motorists to drive fast. (Legally, it's 55 mph today, 35 mph when it opened.)

Newsday investigative reporter Payton Guion recently documented that tension in his story about Amityville officials’ efforts to slow down traffic through the village’s portion of state-controlled Route 110, where at least six people have died in crashes over the last 10 years.

As Guion wrote: "In Amityville's case, the state's interest in keeping cars moving conflicts with the village's desire to slow traffic coming into the village, village officials and road safety advocates told Newsday."

For all the obvious differences between the four-lane stretch of Route 110 in Amityville and the gargantuan Long Island Expressway, one tenet holds true for both: As much as Long Islanders love cars, they hate brake lights. And so traffic calming measures, like the lane reductions proposed by Amityville officials, are bound to come up against the priority of many drivers, and road designers, to minimize traffic congestion.

Maintaining a steady flow of traffic is an entirely legitimate goal, as even Amityville Mayor Michael O'Neill acknowledged. "It’s a state road. They’ve got their concerns, and I’m very, very cognizant of their concerns. They want to make sure that, whatever we do, doesn’t cause problems."

But, if the LIE — or "The World's Longest Parking Lot" as comedian Alan King dubbed it — taught us anything, it should be that, in trying to solve one problem, you should be mindful of not making another one much worse.

Readers speak up

As many crashes as Newsday has documented on Long Island through publicly available data, this reader believes we’re only brushing the surface.

We should remember there are also many unreported accidents (often to avoid increasing insurance premiums). So, the numbers are actually worse than reported. It seems that many of our elected officials are accepting of the current state of motorists disregarding traffic regulations on our roads, or they are ineffective in successfully addressing the situation that is resulting in hundreds of preventable injuries and deaths.

John Minogue, Manhasset

Do you agree that Long Island's dangerous roads problem is even worse than the data suggests? Let us know at roads@newsday.com.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.