Village Moving Forward With Rumble Strips Request

The village board on Thursday took one step forward in the process to better control speed on Rockaway Avenue, especially at the Merillon Avenue/Rockaway Avenue intersection near Garden City High School.

Trustees (Brian Daughney was absent) authorized Public Works director Robert Mangan to request Nassau County place rumble strips on Rockaway Avenue.

The item was deferred at the Oct. 4 and Oct. 18 meetings to give the village's engineering department time to study a proposed location and investigate related noise levels if such strips were to be installed.

Mangan said the strips are thermal. "Single coating rather than the raised coating ... the single one would be more visual than auditory," he said.

"You feel it when you drive over them," Mayor Don Brudie added, noting that certain rumble strips are undesirable in many communities. "Even AAA feels the same about some rumble strips. These are not those kind."

In October the village board unanimously authorized Mangan to request that the county study a possible reconfiguration of the intersection, which could include a traffic light.

Trustee Nick Episcopia said the board will keep pressing the county to approve  the strips. "Most likely the county will not pay for this," he said of the strips. "The bill will come back to us. We'll have to fund it ourselves, most likely."

Episcopia, who sits on the Traffic Commission, recently traveled to Ronkonkoma with police commissioner Kenneth Jackson to see the effectiveness of rumble strips on a similar road approaching a school.

"I think we've done a lot of investigation on this. I think it was reasonably controversial in the beginning. People were concerned about the noise. They were concerned ... there were people who said it would jolt the cars and perhaps it would be dangerous. None of that has proven to be true by the engineers or any of us that went out there and rode around the strips," he said.

Rockaway Avenue is a county-owned road. Advisory signs like flashing yellow warning signs, however, do not need Nassau's approval. The signs, which the Traffic Commission agreed to use, should be delivered within the next two weeks and are expected to be installed before the new year on the north and south sides of Rockaway.

"We are pursung other safety measures here that don't need county approval," trustee Andrew Cavanaugh said. "We are taking other steps as well on our own initiative."

To further mitigate the problem and perhaps ease resident concern, village police are also "cracking down in the area, issuing approximately 500 tickets over the "past couple of months."

Trustee Laurence Quinn, the sole trustee voting against the strips, said the measure is "not necessarily a permanent solution."

"Maybe in a year or two we will re-address this issue," he said.