'Walking audits' identify Long Island road safety hazards

Armed with reflective safety vests, tape measures and notebooks, a group of about 30 people set off from the Sons of Italy Hall in Deer Park at around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, marching down the sidewalk.

The early-bird attendees at the Long Island Complete Streets Summit were learning how to conduct a "walking audit" — a way for ordinary citizens to document pedestrian safety issues and bring them to the attention of officials with control over local infrastructure.

"I think the experience of walking as a pedestrian is different than just driving down the center in a car, where you’re kind of insulated in a comfortable vehicle with music and coffee just hurtling through," said Eric Alexander, executive director of Vision Long Island, a planning group that has hosted the annual Complete Streets Summit for nearly two decades. "Everybody leaves here driving a lot slower."

Vision Long Island has helped organize 25 walking audits on Long Island over the last 10 years, and Alexander said he believes they've made a difference, helping drive safety upgrades in Hicksville, the Village of Hempstead and Glen Cove.

During Tuesday's roughly half-mile walk along Deer Park Avenue, the volunteer auditors encountered places where sidewalk abruptly ended — forcing them onto the shoulder — as well as puddles in the middle of crosswalks and a lack of disability-accessible curb ramps.

"How is someone in a wheelchair expected to get across here?" said Betty Bradford, 74, an AARP volunteer from Roosevelt, standing at the intersection of Deer Park Avenue with Old Country Road, which has a crosswalk but not a pedestrian signal.

The walking audits examine other factors, including conditions of sidewalks, countdown timers and paint on crosswalks. By including community groups, elected officials and local leaders on the walks, the written reports produced out of the audits can carry considerable influence, Alexander said.

"It’s a big constituency. It's not just one person with an idea. It’s really a subset of the community, identifying the problems and seeking solutions," Alexander said.

Patricia Poggi, a crossing guard for Hiawatha Elementary School in Lake Ronkonkoma, said she wants the county to install speed bumps where students cross Patchogue-Holbrook Road.

"Patchogue-Holbrook is like a drag strip," she said.

She said the idea that the physical environment affects drivers' behavior resonated with her.

"It's time to redefine that roadway," she said, adding, "I'm very protective of my kids."

At the summit, experts discussed other potential solutions for addressing Long Island's dangerous roads that could be accomplished with minimal construction or investment. That includes "bulb-outs," curb extensions created by painting the street, "pop up bike lanes," carved out of existing traffic lanes, and "neighborhood slow zones," where speed limits could reduced. 

Because some of the strategies would slow down traffic and contribute to congestion, Frank Pearson, director of transportation safety for GPI, a Babylon-based consulting firm, acknowledged that they would require "political will and the ability to withstand all the naysayers."

"At the end of the day, you're in a downtown area and I think you have to accept that, yes, there's going to be congestion," Pearson told the audience during a panel discussion on redesigning roads to make them safer. "But, guess what. There's congestion all over. So it's not the end of the world. To me, that's not a huge trade-off."