By Kathianne Boniello
Engineers working on the Cross Island Parkway/Long Island Expressway interchange project said they have kept up an aggressive schedule since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks interrupted the northeast Queens road construction.
The Cross Island Parkway/LIE project was planned to reshape the interchange between the two highways, add parkland to Alley Pond Park and increase traffic flowing in from Long Island to the Cross Island Parkway. The project planners also sought to keep commuter traffic off local streets in Douglaston and Little Neck.
Addressing a crowd of between 60 and 80 people at the Douglaston Civic Association meeting Tuesday night, Bob Carbone, one of the project’s engineers, said workers were keeping a six-day schedule to finish the reconstruction by 2003.
“When Sept. 11 hit, everything came to a halt,” he told the audience at St. Anastasia’s School in Douglaston. “Admittedly, there is no slippage time anymore. Everything has to fall into place for us to make it” on time, he said.
Carbone said the pace of the project in the next few months depends on good weather, and engineer Ralph Csogi said if the weather holds, work to reconstruct the Marathon Parkway bridge over the LIE should take a significant step forward in the next few weeks.
As part of the Cross Island Parkway/LIE project, several overpasses in the area are being rebuilt, including the Marathon, Douglaston and Little Neck parkway bridges. Each bridge is being done one half at a time.
Csogi said the current goal is to complete work at Marathon Parkway sometime next fall.
“Each stage takes about nine months,” he said.
But when the majority of those in attendance repeatedly questioned the engineers on what effect the finished project would have on area traffic, the presenters backed off. Carbone and Csogi offered to bring in traffic management experts to a future meeting to answer the community’s questions.
In a related issue, Douglaston Civic Association President Eliott Socci took questions from residents about the state Department of Transportation’s sound barrier project.
As part of the reconstruction the federal government mandates the state to survey residents affected by highway noise to see if sound barriers are desired. If a majority of residents vote to have a noise wall and it is feasible and cost-effective to build one, the DOT will do so, a spokesman told the TimesLedger this week.
An original survey done in 1999 was inconclusive because not enough people voted, the spokesman said.
Socci emphasized that the civic association had no position on the sound barrier issue but encouraged people to vote.
“I find it unconscionable that people do not respond to an issue that is literally in their backyard,” he said.
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
