State grants city, town ability to reduce speed limits

State lawmakers passed legislation last week that would give the Town of Hempstead and the City of Long Beach the ability to reduce speed limits on certain residential streets to less than 30 miles per hour.

The measure was granted the same week that a 14-year-old student at Long Beach Middle student was struck by an SUV on Lido Boulevard.

“The recent incident involving an eighth-grade boy being struck and seriously injured while skateboarding down Lido Boulevard highlighted the need to lower speed limits,” Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach), who sponsored the legislation, said in a statement. “We need to give local officials the ability to make our roadways safer for local families.”

The legislation, which is awaiting Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s approval, gives the Town of Hempstead and the City of Long Beach the option to conduct a study of safety conditions on residential roads, and pass a local law to set appropriate speed limits for the following roads: Cleveland, Harding, Mitchell, Belmont, Atlantic, Coolidge, Wilson and Taft avenues in Long Beach, and Ocean Boulevard and Allevard, Bath, Buxton, Cheltenham, Pinehurst, Harrogate, Matlock, Nantwick, Biarritz, Royat, Luchon, Woodhail, Leamington, Saratoga, Kensington and Prescott streets in Lido Beach.

“By passing this legislation, we have taken steps to enhance the safety of pedestrians, motorists and the residents of Long Beach,” said Scott Rief, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

Additionally, the statute provides that a majority of residents of Lido Beach may petition the Hempstead Town Board to lower the speed limit to less than 30 miles per hour on additional streets, similar to an authority already provided to residents of Point Lookout.

“Reducing the speed limit would protect local families and make these communities a safer place to live and work,” Weisenberg said.

Mary Beth Thurston, a school nurse at Long Beach Middle School, witnessed two recent accidents, including the one on June 19, and said that Lido Boulevard is a very dangerous road.

“Two middle school students have been hit by cars in the last two weeks in the same stretch of road,” Thurston said in a statement. “There are four schools within a half-mile of this stretch. Our lawmakers should help make it safer.”

Alex Michelman, the parent of a middle school student, said he thinks it will take more than just reducing speed limits to prevent similar accidents on Lido Boulevard.

“I don’t buy that it’s going to have any effect,” Michelman said. “I would prefer to see them restrict it to the sidewalk via a substantial guardrail, and the only way to do that is to cut down the trees and widen the sidewalks.”