Raring to go for roadway repair

After a severe winter that gouged many huge holes on local roads due to extended frost-and-thaw cycles, the long-neglected Nassau Expressway will receive some relief as the state Department of Transportation plans to perform approximately $6 million worth of repair work to a portion of the roadway in the fall.
The money is coming from the $61 million the state has set aside for a planned two-phase complete overhaul of Route 878 that connects the Five Towns to Atlantic Beach. That two-part project is expected to begin in 2025.
Between Burnside Avenue in Inwood and Rockaway Turnpike in Lawrence two inches of asphalt pavement will be removed and replaced; if resurfacing is not sufficient to fix the road “full-depth” asphalt pavement repairs will be used (all existing pavement is removed and replaced with several layers of differing asphalt compositions); asphalt leveling will be used to fill any ruts or depressions in the road to smooth the surface and improve channeling of water runoff and a dozen new leaching basins will be installed to reduce roadway flooding. It is a concrete box structure with holes that allows roadway runoff to seep into the ground.
“This road is also part of the Coastal Evacuation route, which is vitally important to coastal residents, especially on barrier islands,” said longtime Atlantic Beach resident Carl Baessler. “I am thrilled to hear that work is beginning in the fall, it is long overdue. There will be construction-induced delays, but knowing the eventual outcome, we can bear it.”
County Legislator Carrié Solages (D-Elmont) whose district includes Inwood thinks this is a “Band Aid in an election year” and repairs to the expressway should have been done already. “This is Election year politics, the $60 million project should have completed years ago,” said Solages, who sent a two-page letter to DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald right before that state announced it will spend a total of $100 million doing a dozen such roadway repair projects throughout Long Island.

“The longer we wait, the worse off we will be,” Solages added referring to the state still holding off on the complete road reconstruction of Route 878 that would include removing and replacing the road base as the expressway was built on a swamp.
Based on the June 3 letter that McDonald sent to Solages, the DOT is finalizing what she called a Project Scoping Report, which “will determine the feasibility of operational improvements and their potential as a future capital project.” McDonald noted the possibility for sidewalks to be constructed along the roadway.
“This stretch of roadway has been a safety issue for many years and on behalf of my many constituents who travel this route each day, I am very appreciative to the governor and our state’s DOT for providing the resources to rectify this problem,” Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg said in a prepared release.
Prior to receiving a response from the DOT commissioner, Solages said he was planning a community protest in an attempt to garner attention to the roadway’s problems. Now he says he will take a wait-and-see approach to check if the work gets completed. “I will keep in contact and get periodic updates,” he said. “This is an issue that will get done and must get done.”