The Plandome Board of Trustees vowed at Monday’s board meeting to address the buildup of commuter traffic and the dearth of parking on Stonytown Road near the Long Island Rail Road station after two residents complained about the problem.
“Stonytown Road traffic gets backed up at the small station,” said Karen Salerno, who lives on nearby Plymouth Road.
“There was no way of anticipating this many people in the community,” she added. “Many of the cars are clearly not Plandome residents.”
Mayor M. Lloyd Williams said the village had considered the problem before but vowed to take action this time.
“I think we’re going to have to do something about this because people are taking advantage of it,” he said.
The problem dates back to the 1970s, Deputy Mayor Ray Herbert said.
“The village tried enforcement and it didn’t go well,” Herbert added. “We tried traffic studies and haven’t come up with solutions.”
Trustee Donald Richardson said enforcement hasn’t worked because “Nassau County won’t send cops to do traffic enforcement.”
The mayor said the village is “looking into having our own security to do enforcement.”
Salerno suggested the village consider putting up signs that limit parking to a set number of hours.
Williams agreed that signs may be an effective way to combat the lack of parking. But he said he prefers not to put signs up because they negatively affect village aesthetics.
Arthur Hazlitt, who also lives on Plymouth Road, complained about the “morass of people picking up at station.”
Williams raised the possibility of assigning a code enforcement officer to address this problem.
“He would have powers to keep traffic moving,” Williams said.
“The problem is there’s nowhere [for people] to go.”
