Dangerous Roads newsletter: Avoid 'Blood Alley' on your commute

After working in Farmingdale for 18 years, my wife, Dana, recently got a job offer in West Hempstead, much closer to home. As it was a big decision for her and our family, we weighed the pros and cons. Compensation, benefits, schedule and duties were all considered.

In the end, one item on the “pro” side of the ledger outweighed all the cons: No longer having to drive on the Southern State Parkway.

This wasn’t just about saving minutes. It was about eliminating the daily gamble that comes with traversing what’s come to be known as “Blood Alley” — the 10-mile serpentine stretch of the parkway between Exit 32 and Exit 17 — roughly, the drive my wife made at least five days a week for the better part of two decades.

“Blood Alley” earned its macabre moniker because of the high rate of fatal crashes there. As Newsday data journalist Karthika Namboothiri reported in her recent rankings of Long Island’s most dangerous roads, the Southern State was the site of 42,700 reported crashes over the last decade, more than any other on Long Island, according to state data.

“Between 2012 and the end of 2023, 137 people have died and 846 seriously injured in crashes on the winding 25½-mile parkway,” Karthika wrote.

Nearly 100 years since the Robert Moses-designed parkway was built, the Southern State remains a fixture of tragedies, as evidenced by a quick scan of Newsday’s recent coverage. Jim Baumbach’s recent story on Long Island’s deadliest month for crashes in more than a decade included the death of a 72-year-old man struck by a hit-and-run driver in Valley Stream — the western end of “Blood Alley,” and my hometown.

You’ll also find Nicole Fuller’s recent courtroom coverage of the case of Kerri Bedrick, the 33-year-old Centerport woman charged with murder for driving while impaired in the August 2024 wrong-way crash on the Southern State that killed her 9-year-old son.

Cynthia Brown, executive director of the New York Coalition for Transportation Safety, an advocacy group, spelled out some of the reasons the Southern State is uniquely dangerous: constant curves and hills that create blind spots, narrow concrete overpasses that seemingly come out of nowhere, and short entrance ramps that give drivers little time to accelerate before merging into high-speed traffic.

With the problem identified, what can be done to fix it? “Not much,” Brown said.

Numerous strategies employed by the State DOT over the years have failed to significantly improve safety, Brown said, including new signage, roadway markings and trimmed-back trees. Other improvements are planned, or under consideration, but Brown questions how much of a difference they can make.

“I don’t know what else they can do,” she said in an interview. “They can’t knock that road down and rebuild it.”

The biggest factor in the Southern State being so dangerous may be its incredibly high volume of traffic. It’s the second-busiest of Long Island’s “Big Three” roadways, according to state data, below the Long Island Expressway and above the Northern State.

As of 2023, the number of cars driving through Exit 19 of the Southern State each day was an astonishing 173,471.

Thankfully, you can now subtract one from that total: my wife.

Readers speak up

In a recent newsletter, I wrote about another especially dangerous road on Long Island, Sunrise Highway. This reader has some ideas on how to make it a little less dangerous for pedestrians.

Every walk/don't walk box on every crosswalk at Sunrise Highway and Merrick Road should be checked. There are too many times when the pedestrian should see the green “walk” signal and instead the signal stays red when it should turn green. This happens too often when I cross Sunrise Highway and Merrick Road in Rockville Centre. The streetlights are always accurate, but the walk/don't walk boxes are not.

Stephen Meyerson, Rockville Centre

How safe do you feel using crosswalks in your community? 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.