Long Island’s Dangerous Car-Centric Legacy

When I was starting as a reporter on Long Island in 1963, for a story on traffic I interviewed Austin M. Sarr, district engineer on the island for the New York State Department of Public Works. Sarr was highly familiar with the then ever-busier highways on Long Island, and he told me about what he called “Sarr’s Law.”

He related that it stated that whenever a highway is built to relieve traffic on a congested highway, the new road will soon be discovered—and get congested, too.

The lesson, Sarr said, is that Long Island needs a mix of transportation options, especially public transit—buses and trains—to move people.

Unfortunately, that was not the view of the state’s public works czar, Robert Moses, who had a devotion to cars—although he didn’t drive one; he was chauffeured around. He caused transportation on Long Island to be car-centric, diverting funds from public transit to construct highways. He built the Southern State and Northern State parkways and the Long Island Expressway.

And that’s what we have been left with.

Various officials in Suffolk County would push for public transit. County Executive Peter Cohalan, in his 1980 annual report, said: “Suffolk County must commit itself to the development of an efficient and reliable mass transportation system,” and that year Suffolk Transit was created and bus routes were set up.

The presiding officer of the Suffolk Legislature, Lou Howard of Amityville, sought to have a monorail built on the center median of the LIE. State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. of Sag Harbor led efforts to establish a network connecting trains and buses.

But because of Moses, autos and highways became the dominant form of transportation here. And what problems that’s caused.

Newsday has been running an ongoing series aptly titled “Dangerous Roads.”

The series often notes that Suffolk “regularly leads” all other counties in New York State in total annual traffic fatalities. That statistic comes from the state’s Institute for Traffic Safety Management & Research. Traffic deaths here annually double the state average. Excessive speeding on major highways is considered a significant factor.

Oh, did I wish that in my 47 years of being a professor at SUNY Old Westbury I could have traveled the 75 miles in each direction in a way other than driving. I entered the LIE in Manorville and on every trip encountered extreme speeding. Some drivers consider the LIE a counterpart of the Indianapolis Speedway, weaving in and out of traffic at 85 mph and over.

Recently, Suffolk Police announced the ticketing of a driver on the LIE stopped at Exit 70 after doing 106 mph. It is a dangerous road.

County Executive Ed Romaine, in his State of the County presentation in September, spoke of the “clogged” highways and lack of LIRR double tracks.

He said: “We need convenient transportation that’s available to link our trains and our buses, we need electrification, we need double rail, we need the investment that should have been made. This [transportation strategy] should not be car-centric.”