Last week I wrote about how the traffic drags down the speed on the L.I.E. eastbound in the afternoon from the overpass of Walt Whitman Road to the Dix Hills area due to it being a continuous upgrade and that the fault lies with the motorists.
Most every Wednesday I leave to go to Forest Hills around 4 p.m. I enter the Northern Parkway westbound from Roslyn Road. It usually moves well until the area of the exits for New Hyde Park Road.
For some reason from there, down the downgrade, a curve to the right and then the upgrade to the Lakeville Road exits it is a traffic jam.
Finally getting past Lakeville Road it picks up again. There is never a visual reason why. Is there something spooky about that area or that it is where the mind control patrol hangs out? I haven’t figured it out.
The motorists do slow down and it is a traffic jam. That is for sure.
As I wrote last week, X number of vehicles have to pass by point Y in Z seconds for a particular volume of traffic to be accommodated. Or to put it simple for kiddie school: If a bucket has a hole in the bottom, water has to drain out as fast as it is poured in or it will back up. What clogs the hole in the bottom is slowpokes that don’t maintain the necessary speed.
Other first grade stuff: The teacher gives the student two apples and says “If I give you two more apples, how many apples do you have?” The student can count them and say four. The teacher says “If I take one away, how many do you have?” etc. The child goes home and is asked “What did you learn today?” The child answers “add and takeaway.”
Last Wednesday, going to Forest Hills, it went well.
Why? First, one could say that the traffic was heavy. From where I entered at Roslyn Road it was moving at 60 miles per hour and continued likewise to well past Francis Lewis Boulevard. The vehicles were properly and evenly spaced for that speed and no empty spaces. The North Korean military could not have done it better, nor James Bond for that matter.
The fact is that for that volume of traffic, 60 mph was required so as not to begin “filling up the bucket.” Around the point where the gas station is in the median, two slowpokes in the center lane broke the flow and even though everyone got around them it never regained the momentum. 60 mph in 55 and 50 mph zones? Hmm. Government by the people and at that time it was unanimous.
Like once on a Sunday afternoon when the eastbound Northern Parkway moved at 70 mph from Route 110 to 454. Nothing unusual about that.
Albany legislators, are you listening and when do we get that traffic light? Also like I-95 south of Jacksonville moving 75 to 80 and can you blame them? It is still some 300 miles straight ahead to Miami.
Part of the Grand Central Parkway has been resurfaced from west of the Queens Boulevard. Exit down the hill where the willow trees grow westward.
There is the exit for Jewel Avenue and 69th Road. To get to the latter one passes under two overpasses and under the second, always hidden by the shadow it casts, was the equivalent of a healthy speed bump. For one going through there not knowing it was front wheels kerbang and rear wheels kerbang.
It would turn a pre-owned vehicle into a used car, fast. It had been there a long time. I was wondering if that short stretch of service would also be resurfaced and yes, it has been.
Finally, goodbye to the speed bump.
Charles Samek
Mineola
