Paving And Pothole Push Coming To LI, HV Roads, Hochul Says

ALBANY, NY — As New York continues to thaw out from a brutally cold winter, one theme has emerged across the state’s roads: The icy, snowy winter left its marks on highways and byways.

Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a statewide push to clean up those marks, seeking to fill over 175,000 potholes across the state with over 8,000 tons of asphalt.

On Long Island, that work will include almost $60 million in repaving and resurfacing; in the Hudson Valley, it’ll include over 40 miles of roadwork across Westchester and Dutchess Counties.

While Hochul’s opening of the state’s purse to fix roads will come as news to many New York drivers, the fact that roads need fixing might not. A January report from Washington, D.C.-based transportation research organization TRIP found that the conditions on New York roads cost drivers over $40 billion annually, including an over $700 cost per motorist across the state.

More locally, officials pointed to a harsh freeze-thaw cycle on heavily trafficked Long Island roads as part of the reason Long Island drivers have been seeing potholes pop up across the island. As temperatures rapidly rise and fall, pavement contracts and expands, allowing for cracks to emerge in the surface and, before long, potholes.

Which Long Island Roads Are Getting Work Done

With Monday’s announcement, Hochul is putting down money to alleviate that cycle. The paving initiative will spend $18.5 million to repave 50 lane miles on the eastbound side of the Northern State Parkway, between the Wantagh State Parkway interchange in Westbury and the New York Avenue overpass near exit 40 in Huntington. That repaving, Hochul’s office said, will mark the end of a five-year resurfacing effort that saw westbound lanes on the parkway completed last fall.

The newly announced project will also resurface 36 lane miles of the Hempstead Turnpike (Route 24) and Front Street (Route 102) in Hempstead Village, at a cost of $13.8 million. The governor’s office said work on those roadways would take place in three segments: Route 24, between Munson Avenue and North Franklin Street; Route 24, between Hendrickson Avenue and the Meadowbrook State Parkway; and Route 102, from William Street to Route 24.

Additionally, the state will be spending $8.8 million on 27 miles of road and 100 sidewalk ramps across Nassau and Suffolk County. In Nassau, that project will cover the Nassau Expressway between Burnside Avenue and the Atlantic Beach Bridge tollbooth; in Suffolk, it’ll cover Route 454 between Route 11 and the LIE North Service Road in Islip.

Finally, construction will resume in Suffolk County on a $17.7 million project that will resurface 61 miles of road and upgrade 180 sidewalk ramps along Sunrise Highway service roads and Route 25.

Hudson Valley Improvements

Hochul also said paving work would get underway in the coming weeks along I-287 in Westchester, resurfacing 38 miles of the highway from Rt. 119 to Westchester Avenue, a stretch that covers parts of Greenburgh, Harrison, Elmsford and White Plains.

That 38-mile stretch will be joined by a one-mile segment of the Taconic State Parkway in Mount Pleasant, running from the Sprain Brook Parkway to the Saw Mill River Parkway; and a three-point-six-mile stretch of the Sprain Brook Parkway that runs through Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant, all in Westchester. Finally, Hochul said a six-point-five mile stretch of Route 308 in Dutchess County, which runs through the towns of Rhinebeck and Milan, as well as the Village of Rhinebeck, would also be getting resurfaced.