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Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, left, is joined by State Sen. Tim...

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, left, is joined by State Sen. Tim Kennedy and members of Suffolk's biking community to call on the New York State Department of Transportation to build a hike-bike path along the Robert Moses Causeway. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and a state senator are calling on the state to build a new bike path that would connect Captree State Park with Gardiner County Park in Bay Shore.

Called the Great South Bay Greenway Trail, the 5.5-mile path would allow cyclists to connect to the recently completed Ocean Parkway Coastal Greenway between Jones Beach, Tobay Beach and Captree and from there to Cedar Creek Park in Seaford, a nearly 50-mile loop.

The proposed trail would start at Captree State Park, which is in the towns of Islip and Babylon, go over the Robert Moses Causeway in Islip and end at Gardiner County Park. The path would give Suffolk residents the same bike accessibility to beaches that Nassau residents currently enjoy, Bellone said.

"We have 50,000 acres of parks and open space here," Bellone said at a news conference last month. "We have some of the greatest spots to go biking, but they’re all separated."

Bellone was joined at the news conference by State Sen.Timothy M. Kennedy (D-Buffalo), chairman of the state senate committee on transportation. Kennedy said that the path could be the next piece of a bike network across the state.

"We’re going to tie the entire state of New York together," Kennedy said.

The trail is estimated to cost $14.5 million to build. No money has been allocated for it in the state budget, a spokeswoman for Bellone said.

The new trail is part of the county’s Hike and Bike Master Plan that was completed in March 2020. The plan proposes more than 1,200 miles of bike infrastructure that would put 84% of Suffolk residents within a half-mile of a bike path. The county in 2019 launched a rental program with 200 bicycles.

Bellone called Long Island a "car-centered world" with infrastructure that caters to that mentality.

"But I’ve never accepted this notion . . . that somehow driving a car everywhere all the time for everything we need to do is part of our DNA as Long Islanders," he said, adding that his goal is for Long Island to become a biking destination.

Both Bellone and Kennedy touted the environmental and economic benefits of more trails. Kennedy said that in 2018, tourism on Long Island had an economic impact of $6.1 billion, supporting 81,000 jobs.

Marty Buchman, owner of the bike-centered Stony Brookside Bed & Bike in Stony Brook, confirmed the economic boost of bike tourism and called the creation of the Great South Bay Greenway Trail a "dream" for which he has been lobbying for years.

"People will come to this from other destinations and they’ll come without their cars," he said. "They’ll become bicycle tourists, and bicycle tourists are wallets on wheels and they’re green tourists."

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