Village calls for safer county roads

In the wake of several traffic incidents — two involving pedestrians hit by cars in the past few months — the mayor of Valley Stream has again appealed to Nassau County officials for assistance with problem intersections along county roads in the village.

Mayor Ed Fare has sent a number of letters to County Executive Ed Mangano and the Nassau County Police Department this year, most recently on Oct. 25, after a student from Valley Stream Central High School was struck by a car that morning at the intersection of Franklin Avenue and West Merrick Road — the same intersection where 12-year-old Zachary Ranftle was killed in December 2014 on his way to Memorial Junior High School.

In the latest incident, the student suffered minor injuries, police said, and he was expected to fully recover. According to the accident report, a 2000 Toyota sedan headed west on West Merrick Road struck him, and didn’t stop.

“We have a serious problem with Merrick Road in Valley Stream,” Fare wrote. “It is a Nassau County owned road that has become a haven for accidents, injury, and yes, even death.”

Fare requested “targeted police enforcement on all infractions that are taking place on Merrick Road in Valley Stream,” including speeding, reckless driving, double parking and illegal U-turns.

In his most recent letter, Fare also wrote that he had ordered village auxiliary police to monitor the intersection of Merrick Road and South Franklin Avenue from 7 to 9 a.m. on school days until the county comes up with a solution.

“The county has the skills, resources, abilities and training to protect all Valley Stream residents,” Fare wrote. “To continue to shirk these responsibilities and force us to rely on Valley Stream public safety and auxiliary officers is unprecedented and, frankly, shameful.”

According to the state Department of Transportation, there were 40 crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists on state roads in the Village of Valley Stream in 2015 (29 pedestrians, 11 cyclists). Ninety-four people were killed on Nassau County roads from 2012 through 2014, according to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to reducing car dependency — and Sunrise Highway, a state-owned road, had the second-highest number of deaths in that period. In the past two weeks, two pedestrians were killed while crossing Sunrise Highway — one in Massapequa and one in Bellmore.

Brian Nevin, a spokesman for Mangano, wrote in an email to the Herald that Mangano had shared Fare’s letter with the police commissioner and asked him to address the mayor’s concerns. Detective Lt. Richard LeBrun, commanding officer of the NCPD’s public information office, said that the study Fare requested would be undertaken.

“At the request of the village, traffic studies are being conducted by the patrol division,” said LeBrun, adding that, “at this time, [traffic enforcement] is at the highest level in five years” based on the number of tickets issued.

On Sept. 13, another CHS student was struck by a car just west of Franklin Avenue, at the intersection of West Merrick Road and Fletcher Avenue. According to the accident report, the driver of a 2013 Chevrolet SUV was making a left onto Fletcher and struck the student, who was crossing about 10 feet north of the crosswalk. The driver told police that visibility was poor because of the sun, and that the student was “looking at her phone.” The student was taken to a nearby hospital with a leg injury.

Superintendent Bill Heidenreich said that the district is working closely with James Bartscherer, commanding officer of the NCPD’s 5th Precinct, to enhance the safety of pedestrians at the intersection. “We’ve been working with the 5th Precinct on stepping up patrols in the area,” Heidenreich told the Herald last month. “They will conduct a study to see if more crossing guards are needed at that intersection.”

Cyclist group calls for bike lanes

More than a dozen cyclists and members of the Long Island chapter of the New York Bicycling Coalition, an Albany-based nonprofit that promotes pro-bicycle policies and funding, gathered on Nov. 20 in Long Beach to call for the creation of bike lanes on Long Island, as well as state legislation that would require drivers to give cyclists three feet of space when passing. The event, originally scheduled to take place in Valley Stream, was held on the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, the third Sunday of November.

“The goal was to come together to organize people on Long Island — and recognize, for the first time, that this needs to stop,” said Long Beach resident Allison Blanchette, the chapter’s coordinator, referring to the growing number of incidents involving bikes and motor vehicles. “The fatality statistics on Long Island are shocking — almost one-third of bike fatalities last year statewide were on Long Island.”

At the Village of Valley Stream’s regular board meeting last week, Blanchette formally introduced herself on behalf of the organization, and said that the village’s statistics warranted a comprehensive roads study.

She said the coalition was planning a bicycle safety fair at Sip This on Rockaway Avenue in early January, and that its message to the community was that “unsafe streets and crashes are not inevitable, unavoidable nor acceptable.”

“We have many members and friends in Valley Stream, and it’s difficult to flip through the Herald and read crash after crash — It has to stop,” Blanchette wrote in an email.

The Bicycling Coalition’s push for enhanced safety and infrastructure comes on the heels of the enactment of New York City’s Vision Zero Action Plan and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $110 million plan, announced this year, for pedestrian safety improvements across the state over the next five years.

Anthony Rifilato contributed to this story.