The good news is that the Nassau County Legislature’s Rule Committee last week approved the hiring of an engineering firm to conduct a design study of Roslyn Road in Roslyn Heights, which has been the scene of several accidents in recent years including one that claimed the lives of two Mineola teenagers and second in which a man driving a pickup truck was killed.
The Legislature also put on hold an earlier plan that included the narrowing of Roslyn Roslyn Road from I.U. Willets Road to the Long Island Expressway Service Road from four lanes to two — one in each direction.
The bad news is that it took criticism from the East Williston School District and two temples — Temple Sinai and Temple Beth Shalom — to prevent the county from going ahead with a plan sure to create a steady diet of traffic jams on Roslyn Road.
And that the East Williston School District might not have known about the plan had they not a story about it in one of Blank Slate Media’s five newspapers.
Also troubling is the timing of the study on a stretch of roadway that has been under review since 2013.
A home at the intersection of Roslyn Road and Locust Lane has been the scene of several accidents. In mid October 2013, a motorist who was allegedly inebriated crashed through side fence of the home and totaled a car parked in the driveway.
Town and county representatives were at the scene of those accidents in March 2014 the day before Mineola teenagers Steven Clancy and Javier Gonzalez, both 19, were killed when they drove through the fence and into the backyard of the doctor’s home.
Less than a month later, in April 2014, a 43-year-old man died when he lost control of his 2006 Dodge Dakota pickup truck and crashed into a charter bus on Roslyn Road, a short distance from Roslyn Road and Locust Lane.
Both the county, which has jurisdiction over Roslyn Road, and the Town of North Hempstead, which oversees Locust Lane, did respond with steps intended to improve safety along Roslyn Road.
A guardrail was installed at the intersection of Roslyn Road and Locust Lane that prevents motorists from crashing onto the owner of the property, a radar device was installed showing motorists the speed at which they were traveling and speed limits along the road were made uniform.
The county, led by County Legislator Judy Jacobs, also came up with two good suggestions — to eliminate a fork in the road at the intersection of Roslyn Road and Locus Lane and the installation of a traffic light at the intersection.
Unfortunately, those suggestions are now on hold, pending the county traffic study.
The county Legislature and the county Department of Public Works appears to have learned their lesson and plan to present the findings of the traffic study to the community including the East Williston School District, the Temple Sinai, Temple Beth Sholom and businesses at the Holiday Farms shopping strip.
Better late than never.
