Transportation on Long Island

Every major form of transportation serves Long Island, including three major airports, railroads and subways, and several major highways. There historic and modern bridges, recreational and commuter trails, and ferries, as well.

Air

Long Island is the location of three large airports with regularly scheduled commercial jet airline service. These are the John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, both in Queens County (in New York City), and the Long Island MacArthur Airport, (sometimes referred to as the "Islip Airport"), a smaller airport in Suffolk County. This is the only airport in Nassau or Suffolk counties with regularly scheduled commercial flights, handling about 2 million passengers a year.

Travelers heading to or from Kennedy Airport may use AirTrain to connect with the Long Island Rail Road in Jamaica or the New York City subway system at Howard Beach.

Roads

The Long Island Expressway, Northern State Parkway, and Southern State Parkway, all products of the automobile-centered planning of Robert Moses, make east-west travel on the island straightforward, if not always quick. Indeed, locals refer to Long Island Expressway as "The World's Longest Parking Lot".

For a less stressful ride, one only needs to travel east across Long Island to the "Twin Forks". These two peninsulas offer a long and ambling journey far removed from the hustle and bustle of suburbia and the city further west. Indeed, even after one reaches the end of Long Island Expressway in Riverhead, it is another 45 minute drive along Middle Country Road to reach the eastern end of the North Fork at Orient Point, and over an hour along Sunrise and Montauk Highways to reach Montauk Point at the end of the South Fork.

Bridges and Tunnels

Until the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, all travel to Long Island was by boat. The first trains to connect Long Island to Manhattan were elevated rail lines that travelled over that same bridge. There are currently ten road crossings out of Long Island: the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Staten Island; the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, Queens Midtown Tunnel, and Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan; the Triborough Bridge to either Manhattan to the Bronx via Wards Island; and the Whitestone Bridge and Throgs Neck Bridge to the Bronx.

All ten crossings are within New York City limits at the extreme western end of the island, making trips from Long Island to New England especially circuitous. Plans for a Long Island Crossing at various locations in Nassau and Suffolk Counties have been discussed for decades, but there are currently no firm plans to construct such a crossing.

In addition to the vehicular tunnels, there are eleven subway and railroad tunnels in Brooklyn and Queens crossing the East River. The most notable of these are the East River Tunnels used by the Long Island Rail Road to connect to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. In addition, the proposed Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel would greatly expand Long Island's access to the national freight rail system.

Bus service

The MTA Long Island Bus provides bus transportation throughout Nassau County and the western portions of Suffolk County. Suffolk Transit provides bus transportation throughout Suffolk County, except within the Town of Huntington, which is served by Huntington Area Rapid Transit.

The 179 fire agencies in Nassau and Suffolk combined have more fire trucks than New York City and Los Angeles County put together. [ [http://www.newsday.com/news/specials/nyf-intruc,0,1393545.story Fire alarm: The trucks] , "Newsday" November 15, 2005]

Rail

The Long Island Rail Road is the busiest commuter railroad system in North America, carrying an average of 282,400 customers each weekday on 728 daily trains. Chartered on April 24, 1834, it is also the oldest railroad still operating under its original name. [http://mta.info/lirr/pubs/aboutlirr.htm]

Ferries

Ferries provide service between Long Island and Connecticut, notably between Port Jefferson, New York and Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the Cross Sound Ferry between Orient Point, New York and New London, Connecticut. Some of the ferries that cross the Long Island Sound carry automobiles, trucks and buses, as well as passengers.

There are also the two ferries which serve Shelter Island (see New York State Route 114), a summer-only ferry between Block Island and Montauk, and a number of ferries serving Fire Island.

References