By Adam Kramer – The Long Island Expressway is the lifeline for thousands of Queens residents who work in the city and the escape route for Manhattanites who try to run from the urban summer heat by heading out to the island's beaches.
By Adam Kramer
Commuters on the stretch of road from the Queens Midtown Tunnel to the Nassau County border know there are the normal traffic delays and over the years they have become adept at avoiding pileups. They take the service road, side streets and even an alternate river crossing.
But construction on the roadway scheduled for completion in 2003 has the LIE looking more like a parking lot than an expressway. The construction, added to the normal traffic patterns on the roadway, has left traffic inching along from the Queens Midtown Viaduct, at the start of the Midtown Tunnel, to the Grand Central Parkway and Long Island Expressway interchange.
“It is a big project to bring up the safety standards of the highway,” said Alex Dudley, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.
Pointing out that the highway is safe based on the criteria used at the time it was built, he said “what we are doing is upgrading it to today's standards. You can always improve standards.”
He said the rehabilitation of the highway includes the installation of new lights, a new road surface, a new drainage system, the removal of the bumps in the road and the installation of the Intelligent Transportation System, or ITS, to help traffic flow.
Dudley said the project is on schedule for completion in 2003 at a total cost of $200 million, making it the most expensive road construction project ever undertaken by the state.
“Some of the projects are going well, others are not,” he said. “There is room for catchup built into the schedule to finish on time. There is give-and-take within the construction time frame.”
Some of the main construction hot spots on the roadway are: from the Grand Central Parkway to the Midtown Tunnel, the LIE and Cross Island Interchange, and the Maurice Avenue exit.
According to the DOT's website certain stages of construction work will be conducted during the night and on weekends when traffic is the lowest. The DOT said LIE bus lanes will operate throughout all stages of construction and no lane closures will be in effect during the holidays.
All along the roadway the DOT is tearing up the old black top and resurfacing and repairing the pavement. The resurfacing of the roadway is supposed to be completed by March 31, 2001.
The construction at the LIE and Grand Central Parkway interchange is a nightmare and scheduled for completion March 15, 2003. In order to fix the roadway, exits and bridge the DOT has diverted traffic into local streets, which causes even more tie-ups as commuters leave the highway.
The $150 million Cross Island Parkway Improvement Project, which is scheduled for completion on July 31, 2003, will redesign the interchange between the Long Island Expressway and the Cross Island Parkway.
The project has been part of a battle between the northeast Queens community and the DOT since 1996, when the agency proposed extending the LIE's High Occupancy Vehicle lane into Queens.
The proposal was an alternative to a state plan to extend the LIE's High Occupancy Vehicle lanes from Suffolk County into Queens. This new plan, announced in February, calls for reshaping the interchange between the two roads and takes the HOV lanes to the county line.
The last major construction project at this time is the Maurice Avenue exit. The westbound exit is being reconstructed and is closed to all traffic. A temporary exit has been built 1,000 feet west of the original exit. The exit on the eastbound side of the LIE has also been realigned.
The DOT said the exit ramps were changed to improve and monitor traffic flow patterns.
In addition to the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the LIE, the DOT is putting in sound barriers in certain areas along the road to improve the quality of life in the communities surrounding the roadway.
