Cirillo, 34, of Oceanside, said the road presents a dangerous bottleneck between safer areas for cycling in Oceanside and Island Park.<\/p>\n
He envisions a solution: dedicated bike lanes, with plastic posts as delineators, along the busiest half-mile stretch from near\u00a0Daly Boulevard to Austin Boulevard. Creating it, he says, would not only make the route safer but could help address summer parking shortages in Long Beach by encouraging more people to bike to the ocean.<\/p>\n
Cirillo requested Nassau County to study the proposal in January, and in August he received an official response from\u00a0the\u00a0Department of Public Works: A bike lane is “not feasible” because it won\u2019t fit along the 40-foot wide road while also accommodating the existing three lanes for vehicles, each 11 feet,\u00a0and parking spaces for cars.\u00a0It also could interfere with drainage and “emergency access points.”\u00a0There was no “recognizable pattern” of bicycle crashes there over three years, the letter said.<\/p>\n
Public Works Commissioner\u00a0Michael Kwaschyn\u00a0and County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s office\u00a0did not respond to multiple requests for an interview\u00a0or emailed questions about the bike lane.<\/p>\n
However, two traffic engineers told Newsday the project seemed feasible while keeping existing traffic lanes, with the elimination of a handful of street parking spaces in front of a well-known\u00a0clam bar.<\/p>\n
“It’s something that looks like it could be fairly easily done inexpensively, and it might get more people bike riding,” said Hal Tarry, a retired state Transportation Department engineer in Smithtown who volunteers with the New York Bicycling Coalition.<\/p>\n
Michael Shenoda, a traffic engineering professor at Farmingdale State College, said: “If you asked me to design a bike provision in there that would meet the [official] standards, I could do it.”<\/p>\n
Biking advocates have long lamented the lack of bike infrastructure on Long Island, where\u00a049 cyclists were killed and about 300 were seriously injured between 2019 and 2023, according to state data. Just 5.5 of the roughly 4,100 miles of road in Nassau County have dedicated bike lanes, while Suffolk County has around 140 miles out of 7,400 miles of road, according to Newsday’s analysis of 2021 data from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. Nassau also has about 72 miles of off-road paths for\u00a0biking and Suffolk around 52 miles.<\/p>\n
Experts told Newsday Cirillo\u2019s case illustrates some of the common challenges to building bike facilities on Long Island, like long-standing prioritization of cars, limited space and a feeling that\u00a0bike lanes have become politicized.<\/p>\n
“Long Island was designed as a car land, and so it’s very hard” to change the focus, Shenoda said.<\/p>\n
Denise Ford, a former county legislator who lives in Long Beach, said she\u2019s long wanted to improve bicycle connectivity to the north. The county began a formal study for a Long Beach Road bike lane years ago, she said, but she was unsure if it was ever finished.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know, with the county, why there is resistance,” Ford said of Cirillo\u2019s bike lane proposal. “I wish that we would try to find ways [to] accommodate all modes of transportation, cars as well as bicycles.”<\/p>\n
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‘Bike city’<\/p>\n
As a teenager, Cirillo loved working on and driving cars. After Army service and a tour in Iraq, he studied mechanical engineering on the GI Bill at Hofstra, then joined his father\u2019s business managing cellphone tower sites.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As he began bicycling more, he wondered why Nassau had so little bike infrastructure compared to New York City or even other suburbs.<\/p>\n
“I was like, \u2018Why the hell is this not happening here?\u2019 ” he said, sitting in the home he shares with his wife, pregnant with their first child.<\/p>\n
Cirillo found decades-old planning documents outlining unrealized, grand visions \u2014 such as\u00a0a 1998 county master plan calling\u00a0for an extensive network of bicycle trails and a 2010 proposal to integrate\u00a0bicycles “into the transportation system as a real alternative to vehicular travel.”<\/p>\n
Mike Hammer, the owner of Long Beach Bicycles,\u00a0who pedals over 8,000 miles each year, said he was unaware of Cirillo\u2019s proposal but supports the idea, especially since he was hit by a car while riding on Long Beach Road years ago.<\/p>\n
“This is a bike city,” he said. “When traffic is dense here, you can get around much faster on a bike than you can in your car, not to mention the parking woes that we have here.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sean Cirillo, 34, of Oceanside, is advocating for a protected bike lane along Long Beach Road. Credit: Morgan Campbell<\/p>\n
A bottleneck for cyclists<\/p>\n
Cirillo asked the county to study a mile-long stretch of Long Beach Road, noting\u00a0the most critical area is a half mile between Austin Boulevard and Daly Boulevard. To the north, cyclists can access southwest Oceanside\u2019s quiet residential streets by cutting through a shopping mall; to the south, Long Beach Road becomes quieter\u00a0as cars diverge onto Austin Boulevard.<\/p>\n
Much of the segment is flanked by marsh and landfill, with a wide grassy median. It includes a bridge where anglers often fish from the sidewalk\u00a0and Peter\u2019s Clam Bar, which hosts an annual charity clam-eating contest, where past winners have slurped down\u00a0over 100 mollusks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Peter\u2019s Clam Bar in Island Park on Thursday, where a bike lane would take away parking spots on Long Beach Road. Credit: Newsday\/Howard Schnapp<\/p>\n On a September weekday morning, roughly a half-dozen cyclists and scooter-riders passed through over the course of\u00a040\u00a0minutes, including a man with a half-open backpack filled with groceries.<\/p>\n Tarry,\u00a0the former state DOT engineer, noted some cyclists bike for recreation\u00a0but\u00a0others,\u00a0lacking\u00a0a car or license,\u00a0do it out of necessity.<\/p>\n In the county’s response to Cirillo,\u00a0Kwaschyn, the DPW commissioner,\u00a0wrote\u00a0that in order to be feasible, there would have to be a 3-foot buffer between the 5-foot\u00a0bike lane and vehicular traffic \u2014 but there was insufficient space “to ensure cyclists’ safety.”<\/p>\n Shenoda, the Farmingdale State professor, said as long as the bike lane is 5 feet wide, it could fit in the available space, possibly with a narrower buffer and plastic delineation poles\u00a0separating it from vehicle lanes.<\/p>\n Cirillo said he thinks county engineers were reluctant to remove\u00a0six to eight street parking spaces in front of Peter\u2019s Clam Bar. The restaurant, which also has two parking lots with over 100 spaces, is owned by longtime Nassau concessionaire and GOP fundraiser Isaac “Butch” Yamali. Yamali\u2019s company, Dover Group, did not answer Newsday\u2019s requests for comment about the proposed bike lane.<\/p>\n Cirillo said he hoped the restaurant would see it\u00a0as a boon to business, adding, “Bicyclists spend money.”<\/p>\n Posted signs mark Long Beach Road as a county \u201cbike route,” but there is no bicycle lane. Credit: Morgan Campbell<\/p>\n Institutional hurdles for bike lanes<\/p>\n Tarry said traffic engineers’ reluctance to build\u00a0bike lanes is not unique to Nassau.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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