Drivers on Long Island can expect a wave of road work in the weeks ahead. The state has announced that road repairs are coming this month to several of the region's busiest routes, part of a broader effort to improve the condition of local roadways.
Three major roads are at the center of the plan. The repairs are set to cover the Long Island Expressway, Sunrise Highway and the Heckscher State Parkway, all of them heavily travelled corridors that carry large volumes of traffic across the region.
The scale of the investment is significant. The state says it is going to spend nearly 150 million dollars to repave those roads, a figure that underlines how much work officials say is needed to bring the surfaces up to standard.
The project goes beyond resurfacing alone. As part of the same effort, the state plans to fix three south shore bridges, adding structural work to the repaving and widening the scope of the repairs beyond the road surfaces themselves.
Officials have identified which bridges are involved. One of them is the Loop Parkway, while the other two are located on the Meadowbrook, pointing the work toward crossings that are part of daily routes for many Long Island drivers.
Maintenance work is also planned away from the roads and bridges. The state Department of Transportation says crews will clean out more than 1,100 storm drains, a task aimed at keeping water flowing off roadways and reducing the risk of flooding.
Taken together, the repaving, bridge repairs and drain cleaning add up to a substantial round of public works for Long Island this month. The combination of surface, structural and drainage work signals an effort to address several layers of the region's road system at once.