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Board Approves Woodbury Road Improvements

By: 
Andrew Wroblewski
Publication: 
The Long Islander
Aug
20
2015

After a year-long traffic calming study, Huntington Town Board members last week unanimously approved the next step in implementing safety improvements to a dangerous stretch of Woodbury Road.

The 2.5-mile portion of Woodbury Road, which straddles the Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington and Huntington Station borders, has been the site of two fatal accidents since 2013.

On June 25, 2013, Andrew Garafalo, 21, of Melville, was killed in a two-vehicle crash.

Almost a year later, on May 20, 2014, a man unidentified by police died after losing control of his vehicle and crashing into several trees on the side of Woodbury Road. There have also been several serious, but non-fatal, accidents on the Woodbury Road stretch from Main Street south to West Pulaski Road, including a July 31, 2014 two-vehicle crash that sent three people to the hospital.

On Aug. 19, 2014, Huntington town board members approved a $24,818.52 traffic-calming study conducted by Gibbons, Esposito & Boyce Engineers, of Uniondale, for the town’s Department of Transportation and Traffic Safety in order to analyze the road and determine methods to improve safety.

The results of that study were released on June 15. Ttown board members are now “taking the next step,” Councilwoman Susan Berland said after the Aug. 11 town board meeting.

“We are now in the process of implementing many of the recommendations to calm the traffic on Woodbury Road,” Berland, who sponsored the resolution approving the improvements, said in a release. “I look forward to assessing the success of these measures as they are implemented.”

The board has agreed to pay an additional $16,625 to the engineering firm in order to implement improvements such as updated pavement markers and rumble strips and further studies including a topographic survey of curves around Woodbury Road and state-of-the-art skid resistance testing.