Hospital Road Bridge rebuild completed, part of $48 million in Long Island overpass work

Hospital Road Bridge in East Patchogue, long criticized as an outdated chokepoint for nearby emergency responders, was among a series of overpasses recently rebuilt on Long Island totaling $48.2 million, state officials announced.

Community leaders first began sounding the alarm on the narrow East Patchogue span in the 1990s as traffic visibly backed up, signaling it was unable to keep up with the expanding neighborhood’s needs.

But it wasn’t just a matter of ease of driving for several ambulance and fire officials. The bottleneck meant no way to cut through traffic to get to the nearby Long Island Community Hospital and officials feared the health of patients seeking emergency care. The bridge spans Sunrise Highway and sits between the hospital on the south side and the North Patchogue Fire Department’s Station 3 on the north side. It's routinely used by a dozen ambulance and fire agencies.

“You had instances where ambulances were stuck in that traffic for 10 minutes or more trying to get across that bridge,” said Daniel Losquadro, Brookhaven superintendent of highways, who started advocating for funding to rebuild the bridge roughly nine years ago.

Former North Patchogue Fire District Commissioner Jack Blaum was raising issues in the 1990s regarding the challenges for first responders, according to his son, also Jack Blaum, who is the current fire commissioner.

The younger Blaum was the fire chief at the time, taking aim at congestion on the two-lane bridge alongside his dad and other officials. Traffic would often be at a standstill during peak commuting hours, he said.

“For anyone with advanced life support or a serious emergency, a couple of minutes will make a big difference,” Blaum said. “It was the hospital of choice for west, north and east into the Mastics and Shirley, so demand for movement through that bridge was great. Every ambulance taking a patient to the hospital had to get off Sunrise Highway and utilize that bridge in some way.”

But the new bridge is expected to ease congestion and alleviate old concerns.

The new wider span features an additional travel lane to ease congestion, plus new sidewalks and 12-foot-wide shoulders for bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Hospital Road’s intersections with both the north and south service roads were revamped with turning lanes, crosswalks, and traffic signals with pedestrian countdown timers to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Blaum said it was a shame that the project took nearly four decades, long after his father died in 1997. But he is pleased it is finally done and that the actual construction was completed in about 2.5 years, while the old span stayed open to vehicles. 

Originally built in 1959, Hospital Road Bridge carries more than 12,000 vehicles a day. 

About 80% of the $22.8 million bridge funding was federally funded, the rest came from state and the town of Brookhaven, Newsday has reported. 

“It was one of those projects that needed to be done and it was long overdue,” said Gregory Miglino Jr., chief of South Country Ambulance Company, headquartered in Brookhaven.

The other recently completed bridge projects include bridge deck reconstruction on five Long Island Expressway bridges, near Exits 48, 61 and 62; as well as renewal of the Sunrise Highway bridge over Hubbards Path in the Town of Babylon.