Intersection reaches crossroads

An intersection that the Herald described as “among the county’s worst” as far back as October of 2005 is being updated and improved.

As most Baldwin drivers, pedestrians and cyclists have noted, eastbound traffic on Sunrise Highway has long snarled at the intersection with Grand Avenue. This reliable delay has no doubt frustrated many commuters who cruise through Valley Stream, Lynbrook and Rockville Centre, leaving them with a less than favorable impression of traffic flow in Baldwin and costing them countless hours while they wait for traffic to shake itself free at the intersection.

Baldwin’s own traffic activist, Jack McCloy — you may remember him from his red-light camera cessation lawsuit and his suggested solutions for the wrong-way driving epidemic — had long been frustrated by the recurring traffic jams and resolved to do something about them as early as 2004. After spending many long hours trapped in his car at the corner of Sunrise and Grand, McCloy theorized that the problem with the intersection was a too-short left-turn lane off Sunrise Highway. McCloy noticed the lane wasn’t long enough to accommodate the number of vehicles exiting Sunrise for Grand. Because the lane was too short, McCloy realized, the exiting cars stacked up, overflowed into the fast lane of Sunrise Highway and created a bottleneck. (See diagram above.)

McCloy voiced his hypothesis at a Hempstead town hall meeting hosted by Anthony Santino seven years ago. Impressed, Santino asked for a hard copy of McCloy’s ideas, and also requested that they be sent to Gary Sauer, the Town of Hempstead’s traffic control director.

Santino and Sauer both liked McCloy’s thinking, but told him that any reconstruction of the intersection would likely take years. This did, in fact, prove true, but a reconstruction of the maligned turn lane is finally under way.

At a town hall meeting on May 2 — hosted, once again, by Santino — McCloy thanked county officials for ushering his lane-lengthening proposal though many channels of approval. Santino, in turn, thanked McCloy for his ideas on improving the intersection and alleviating traffic on one of Baldwin’s main arteries. Santino observed that good ideas don’t always find their origins in political discourse, and encouraged all members of the community to be vocal in making suggestions.

Comments about this story? CConnolly@LIHerald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 283.