Advocates ask Long Islanders to ditch their cars for a day

Officials, students and environmental advocates highlighted progress but also shortcomings in Long Island's alternatives to car travel at Farmingdale State College on Wednesday.

Outside the event at the campus center, held in preparation for next week's World Car Free Day, volunteers collected pledges from students to walk, bicycle or use public transportation on Monday.

Elisa Picca, Suffolk County's deputy planning commissioner, said while the Long Island Rail Road's Grand Central Madison station — opened in 2023 — has gotten a lot of attention for benefiting commuters, Suffolk County has experienced its own, smaller improvement in its public transportation.

She said Suffolk County Transit bus ridership increased 30% in 2024 over the previous year — an additional 600,000 rides — and is on track to increase another 10% this year. Additional data wasn't immediately available.

While other public transit systems have also experienced a rebound after the pandemic, Picca credited the growth to a redesign of Suffolk's bus system in late 2023. That's when the county eliminated 14 of 41 bus routes, while increasing frequency on the busiest lines and expanded evening and weekend hours. Suffolk also added app features for GPS bus tracking and is preparing to add 40 new hybrid buses to the system in 2026, she said.

"When you provide frequent, reliable, interconnected service ... customers respond," Picca said.

Farmingdale State College President Robert Prezant said 40% of Farmingdale students use the Long Island Rail Road to get to campus, made easier by a shuttle bus that runs between the college and the train station.

"It's important that we have periodic reminders [like World Car Free Day] that we can do something" to address climate change, he said.

However, speakers also said Long Island still has a long way to go to provide a robust alternative transportation network.

A recent Newsday-Siena College poll found most Long Islanders think public transportation is worse than other places.

Eric Alexander, director of nonprofit Vision Long Island, said there is a need for "citizen-lobbyists" to shape transportation policy that is too often focused on roads and potholes alone.

Marty Buchman, a retired Plainview High School teacher and advocate with the New York Bicycling Coalition, said he is excited about the planned Long Island Greenway, which will be a protected trail stretching from Queens to Montauk Point.

Buchman said he's been hit by cars and hospitalized twice while bicycling, and the Island desperately needs more protected lanes.

"I don't have another accident in me," he said. "There's been some improvement, but not enough."

Across Long Island, pedestrians and cyclists made up over a third of people killed in crashes in 2023, Newsday has reported as part of its ongoing Dangerous Roads series.

Monday's Car Free Day is about showing "we can clean our air, shift behaviors and help communities embrace new ways to move," said event organizer Mindy Germain, manager at Transit Solutions, an MTA program.