Category: LI_CN TRANSPORTATION_CYCLES_CN

The traffic, sprawl and not-so-bicycle-friendly highways on Long Island made commuting by bike an unlikely option for Hank Degamon. But when the 62-year-old first hopped on the saddle of an electric two-wheeler and hit the throttle, the 750-watt motor unleashed an unexpected zing.

Suffolk lawmakers Tuesday authorized $5,375,000 for the county’s first 12 battery-electric buses, part of County Executive Steve Bellone’s plan to transition to an all-electric fleet of vehicles by 2030.

New York State’s Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022, which voters passed by a comfortable margin on Nov. 8, will be of greatest benefit to Long Island, an environmental activist said this week.

A complex system of sea gates and concrete walls with lifting panels are needed to protect Long Island's vulnerable South Shore communities from storm surges and rising sea levels, according to a study by a Stony Brook University professor.

Currently, three offshore wind projects are slated to be constructed off the eastern end of Long Island. With that in mind, program managers and mentors from the Bridgehampton Child Care…

Long Islanders who heat their homes with natural gas are expected to see a 29% increase in their heating bill this winter, National Grid said Tuesday, as volatility in the natural gas market continues to impact prices, particularly in the Northeast.Average National Grid customers will see their total winter heating bills jump $299 this winter to $1,320, excluding taxes. Winter heating bills in 2021 saw a 25% increase. National Grid has about 611,000 gas customers on Long Island.

Scientists from Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) announced the culmination of a decade of science in a paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science, which describes a novel restoration approach used in Shinnecock Bay that has led to a 1,700 percent increase in the landings and densities of hard clams in that estuary, along with the expansion of seagrass meadows and the end of harmful brown tides — a result that brings the Shinnecock Bay back to its 20th century glory for shellfishing. Furthermore, this may serve as a shining example of a process to restore other estuaries around the country and the world.

The entire South Shore of Long Island has been upgraded to severe drought status by national officials after summer rainfall in the region was half of what is considered normal.
The U.S. Drought Monitor, part of the federal government, in its latest national map released Thursday upgraded the South Shore in both Nassau and Suffolk from its previous ranking of moderate drought level.

Battery-operated train technology, which the LIRR hoped would revolutionize how it operates nonelectrified tracks, has turned out to be too costly, inconvenient and risky to implement any time soon, the railroad said.

Long Island Rail Road officials said last month that they would not move forward with the next phase of testing the battery trains, citing costs as one of the main reasons. After a feasibility study, the railroad determined it would cost $26 million to outfit two electric train cars — significantly more than the cost of buying a pair of new train cars. The LIRR’s new M9 fleet cost about $3.6 million per car.

When Michael Doall was a teenager, he hated seaweed, and so did everybody else he knew on Long Island. It was an icky nuisance that brushed against your legs at the beach, fouled your fishing hook and got tangled around the propeller of your boat. Only later, as a marine scientist and oyster farmer, did he develop a love for sugar kelp, a disappearing native species that is one of the most useful seaweeds. Now he is on a mission to bring it back to the waters of New York.