Bus, truck traffic an issue on residential Copiague street

Several times a day, six days a week, a Suffolk Transit bus heads down 35th Street in Copiague on its way to a bus stop in the Big Lots shopping center on Sunrise Highway.

Joseph Ochwat has asked the county to change the route so it avoids the street where he's lived for more than 50 years. "We can't sit with the windows and doors open," he said.

His is one of nine houses that line one side of the street a block from Sunrise; shrubs and a fence form a buffer to the rear of the shopping center.

Ochwat wants the route redrawn to use parking lot entrances on Sunrise Highway or Straight Path instead of the one on 35th Street.

But the change would require moving the bus stop to another site on the shopping center property, county spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter said, a move that would need the property owner's permission. "We've been ignored," she said of the owner, listed in public records as 1255 Sunrise Realty LLC.

County Legis. DuWayne Gregory (D-Amityville) has tried, too. "My office has reached out to the owner multiple times to seek their approval and we've been unsuccessful thus far," he said in a statement issued by his office.

Watchdog struck out as well: Our call to 1255 Sunrise Realty wasn't returned.

Ochwat would like Babylon Town to ban trucks from the street as well. But town spokesman Kevin Bonner said the town concluded after a traffic engineering study that other shopping center entrances can't accommodate large trucks and the lot's layout makes it impossible for a truck to turn around and exit the same way it came in.

There's yet another obstacle: The street is a segment of an authorized truck route connecting Copiague to Lindenhurst. "It's been established as a connection between Sunrise and downtown Lindenhurst," Bonner said.

Still, one of Ochwat's efforts has paid off: Babylon posted signs prohibiting trucks from parking and idling on the street. "We enforce it as much as possible," Bonner said.

And the next move? It belongs to the shopping center owner. Who needs to pick up the phone.

-- JUDY CARTWRIGHT

There is a dangerous pedestrian crossing at a major intersection near the Broadway Mall in Hicksville. The pedestrian buttons on North Broadway at Nevada Street are useless because there are no "walk/don't walk" signs. There's no way to know how much time remains until the light changes back to green. It's like playing Russian roulette.

-- Ted Choate, Syosset

You won't have to gamble anymore while crossing North Broadway, Mr. Choate.

The state Department of Transportation has installed new crossing signals equipped with countdown timers at the crosswalk on North Broadway, a six-lane road. The improvements, made in late October, signal how much time is left on the crossing signal.

The work had been planned as part of routine traffic signal maintenance program, department spokeswoman Eileen Peters said in an email. "NYSDOT did not receive any requests for these improvements so the timing of the Newsday request for signal improvements is sheer coincidence," she wrote.

Choate said he had contacted the department through its online feedback form about a month before the work was done.

We checked in with him recently. "It is now safe to cross North Broadway at this busy intersection," he responded in an email. "I am sure every walker appreciates it."

-- MICHAEL R. EBERT

There's reason to give thanks in North Bellmore: The sun is shining again on the DeFiglia backyard.

It's been more than a year since we first spoke with Nancy and Santo DeFiglia about the deteriorating conditions of the long-vacant Army base behind their home. The base was closed in the early 1990s; as the property went untended, vegetation around the perimeter grew so thick and tall it blocked out the sunlight.

Hempstead Town issued notices of violation last year to the then-owner of the property for problems including outside storage of debris and dirt. But the situation remained largely unchanged until May, when a fine was paid and the property wound up under new ownership, a developer who soon began building houses there.

Santo DeFiglia called to tell us the large tree was gone and, with it, the backyard gloom. "Now I know when it's daylight," he said.

He remembers when the property, the Bellmore Logistics Facility, was a good neighbor to the more than 40 homes on three of its borders. As new houses rise on the site, he's optimistic it will be again.

-- JUDY CARTWRIGHT