This article will consider improvements to the safety and convenience of movement within and to Hauppauge's Hub by walking, cycling, transit, or as a visiting motorist who will ultimately walk around the Hub at some point. The recommendations I will make are based around the following assumptions:
1. Walking and cycling are cost-effective transportation options (i.e. they require no gas and limited capital investment compared to automobiles).
2. Walking and cycling, given their slower speeds, allow for a greater appreciation of one's built environment and community.
3. Regular walking and cycling on safe facilities have a positive impact on one's health.
4. Hauppaugians want to walk and cycle to local businesses, school, doctor's appointments, restaurants, the library, and parks.
5. Hauppaugians would enjoy walking and cycling around their community and Hub if safe and convenient facilities to do so existed.
6. Boosting local rates of walking and cycling can potentially act to mitigate congestion.
7. Walking, cycling, and transit use can reduce the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere if they effectively replace car trips.
Please feel free to disagree with these assumptions! The intent of the recommendations of this missive is not to incur greater municipal debt or raise taxes, but simply to plan for the improvement of our walking and cycling resources with regular reinvestment and redevelopment.
The greatest urgency for improvement in our Hub's pedestrian network belongs to the need to plug sidewalk gaps and paint crosswalks where none presently exist. A network is only as good as its connections, and without these integral connections the network within our Hub falls apart and becomes downright hostile to the happenstance perambulator. The need for sidewalk connections is essential along the north side of Route 111, given the number of businesses along that side and the relatively short sidewalk gaps. As a subset of this goal would be the general improvement of roadway edges, which might consist of repaving and placing curb to define the edge of a roadway along the south side of Route 111 where there is presently rutting at its intersection with Route 454, or where it merges with Townline Road. Hauppauge High School could also relocate its fence along its Wheeler Road frontage to widen the grassy area for a future sidewalk, given that students and others still walk along the inadequate grassy verge between the fence and the curb along Wheeler Road.
This same network issue offers a good segway into bicycle movement throughout the Hub. Presently, aside from the new shared use path along Route 347 and the inadequate bicycle lane on Route 454, bicycle facilities (paths, lanes, bike-friendly markings) are non-existent within the Hub. The absence of wide shoulders along Route 111 presents a particularly notable hazard, given its 40 mph speed limit. I have illustrated that Route 454 likely warrants the same shared use path as Route 347 given its 55 mph speed limit, traffic volume and width, while the other roadways intersecting with the Hub can feature bicycle lanes through re-striping and narrowing travel lanes or in their existing format.
Beyond improvements to ensure the safety of pedestrian and cyclist movement are moves to make either mode more convenient and enjoyable. One such way to do so is to appreciate our rural past and seek to create rustic (gravel, macadam, porous pavement?) passageways between commercial lots in the Hub, in the spirit of the farmers paths of yore. There is also potential for this across and over the High School and Middle School properties, to the benefit of students during school, and the community at all other times. Another means of improvement would be to ensure pedestrian access to storefronts; too often in our lovely hamlet, street frontages have sidewalk but the only way to get to a storefront is to walk along a driveway meant for vehicles. This creates conflicts which could be mitigated by walkways to the front of buildings and from the street directly to shopping centers.
Finally, there is the truly wondrous Complete Street and Greenway extensions. A complete street provides for the movement of all users (cars, buses, trucks, pedestrians, cyclists). Townline Road is an excellent candidate for a Complete Street to feature continuous sidewalks, bike lanes, street trees, and underground utilities, given the historic homes that line its course, the connections it makes to the schools and the future public library, its lower traffic volumes than Route 111, and the absence of public transit making other alternatives that much more important. If only there were an effective way to deal with the merge with Route 111??? (To be introduced later...). Wheeler Road is also superb as a candidate for a complete street and a hybrid boulevard which could be introduced between Townline and Route 347. Finally, we can take advantage of some of our latent historic resources and upgrade the path connecting the Brooksite neighborhood to Forest Brook and in doing so connect it to the Hub via Sunset Lane and the existing improvements along Brooksite Drive, or the power lines bisecting the Astronaut Neighborhood could be used as a shared use path to connect to a sidewalk and bicycle lane on Lincoln Boulevard, toward Hauppauge's Hub or the Central Islip Train Station.
So! Go ahead and enjoy! I have gotten way ahead of myself as usual, but what can I say, I love dreaming about this place. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to do so. I look forward to my next post where we'll see if we can do something about all of this nasty congestion on Route 111!
