The DMV In the Three Roads Plaza will close its doors on Aug. 25. Photo by Heidi Sutton/TBR News Media
By Heidi Sutton
The Port Jefferson Station office of New York State’s Department of Motor Vehicles will close by the end of August.
In a press release on July 27 the agency announced that it is consolidating its brick-and-mortar locations in Suffolk County and that the closing was part of its strategic transformation plan and “ongoing efforts to maximize operational efficiencies and best utilize taxpayer resources.”
The office, located at 1055 Route 112 in the Three Roads Plaza, will no longer serve customers after August 25. Operations and staff at that location will be absorbed by the other four offices in Suffolk County which include Medford, Hauppauge, Dix Hills, and Riverhead.
“One of the foundational goals of our transformation effort is to change how we operate and to work more effectively in a fiscally responsible manner,” said DMV Commissioner Mark J.F. Schroeder. “All decisions about our office locations are made with our customers and employees top of mind, and through careful consideration and analysis of the facts and data.”
Schroeder said the decision was based on the expansion of the DMV’s online and self-service transactions which had led to a declining number of in-person transactions at the Port Jefferson Station office.
“Because of the significant expansion of our online footprint, our appointment system, and the processing efficiencies we have gained in the past two years, we see an opportunity to shift our workforce to the other locations in Suffolk County to maximize the capacity in those offices and ultimately to serve our customers better and faster,” he said.
There are currently more than 70 transactions and services available at DMV.NY.GOV that customers can use to better prepare to visit an office and make their experience as seamless as possible or skip the trip altogether. Customers can renew a driver license or vehicle registration online, order a duplicate document, request their driving record, pay fees and fines, check the status of their ID, change their address and more.
For in-person transactions, customers are encouraged to visit the Medford office at 2799 Route 112, which is approximately 10 miles from the Port Jefferson Station location.
“The average customer who visits [the DMV office] is in and out in less than 30 minutes thanks to DMV’s appointment scheduling system that allows customers to avoid waiting in line” said the release.
For more information, call their customer service number at 1-800-698-2931.
Did you know? The Long Island Museum, 1200 Route 25A, Stony Brook offers docent-led tours of its state-of-the-art Carriage Museum on July 22, July 23 and July 29 from 1 to 3 p.m. Visit eight galleries and learn about the world before cars through conversation, photographs and artifacts. All ages welcome. Free with paid admission to the museum. For more information, call 631-751-0066 or visit www.longislandmuseum.org.
With ongoing concerns about young adults leaving Long Island, other age demographics may be looking for the escape hatch.
Adults aged 60 and over, who account for roughly 20% of Suffolk County’s population according to a 2022 report from the Suffolk County Office for the Aging, have been feeling the impact of Long Island’s high prices as well.
Eric Stutz, a real estate broker based out of Baldwin who specializes in seniors and estates, said he sees Long Island as below average in being a senior-friendly place.
“I see a lot of my clients are heading to the Southeast, between North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida,” he said in a phone interview. “That seems to be the majority.”
Recently, a pair of Stutz’s clients had to choose between staying on Long Island with two of their children or moving to North Carolina, where their daughter lived.
“It was a tough decision, it took a couple of years,” Stutz said. “But their main reason for moving to North Carolina … was the cost of living on Long Island.”
JoAnn Kullack, the chair of Long Island’s chapter of the Retired Public Employees Association, sees many other senior citizens having to choose between living on Long Island or finding somewhere more affordable.
“Most seniors that I know do complain about the cost of living,” she said.
‘Most seniors that I know do complain about the cost of living.’
— JoAnn Kullack
Kullack believes that one of the big draws of staying on the Island for seniors is the abundance of medical care. Big university hospitals, such as Stony Brook, and the closeness of Manhattan hospitals and specialists offer valid incentives for seniors to want to stay.
“A lot of people that I know want to stay here on Long Island,” due to access to premium health care services, Kullack said. “They don’t wish to leave.”
Kullack suggested lowering the utility rates could offer much-needed relief to Long Island’s senior citizens. While some programs are available that can assist, she added the qualifications are often unrealistic.
“A lot of people don’t qualify,” the RPEA chair said. “If you have two people in the household, you have to be [only earning] $30,000. How can you live here on that?”
“You’re taking into consideration paying taxes, paying for utilities, and even if you have no mortgage on your home, you still have to have enough money for food,” she added.
Town of Brookhaven Councilwoman Jane Bonner (R-Rocky Point) views Long Island as a challenging place to live, especially for those who do not make a lot of money.
“We need to address the high tax rate on Long Island,” she said in a phone interview. “We need to do a better job of taking care of our seniors and veterans. So many of our seniors are house rich and cash poor.”
Long Island can also be tough to navigate for seniors who cannot drive, as there is a lack of adequate public transportation.
“I know myself and my husband do a fair amount of taking our moms to doctor appointments and shopping,” Bonner said, adding, “Transportation services are cut when budgets are tight — bus routes are removed.”
Brookhaven does have programs aimed at helping seniors who may have trouble with transportation, Bonner explained. Still, the town does seek to assist its aging population where it can.
“We have our senior clubs, our senior transportation, nutrition at our senior centers and Meals on Wheels. We do our part.”
Bonner added that she wants to see seniors be able to “age in place,” where they want to be, instead of being pushed out.
“That’s what we need because if we can provide resources for our seniors to age in a place where they are most comfortable — in their home. It is more affordable that way than building large-scale senior complexes,” the councilwoman said.
How should I travel to the recent Association for Recorded Sound Conference in Pittsburgh? Although the air flight from New York is short, I was shocked when I found the round trip would cost up to $500. A 430-mile car journey didn’t come into consideration.
Following a quick call to Amtrak and after negotiating the inevitable automated messages, I was quoted a return fare of $133.20 on the daily Pennsylvanian train.
After checking the Long Island Rail Road app, I found the connections between Stony Brook and Penn Station were workable, even if it meant all-day journeys to and from Pittsburgh on a Wednesday and a Sunday. I had the time.
With the booking made, I wondered how much extra a business-class seat would cost. When I was quoted $116.40 for the privilege, I accepted with alacrity. Why not travel in comfort? The total outlay was still half the price of an air flight without the hassle of going through LaGuardia Airport and the rest.
The 7:43 a.m. train from Stony Brook arrived on or close at Penn Station. After a short hike through the building site that is one of the premier U.S. rail stations, I arrived at bustling, brand-new Moynihan Train Hall in plenty of time for the 10.58 a.m. Amtrak train to Pittsburgh. We headed south on a perfect sunny day through New Jersey to Philadelphia before we veered west via Lancaster and Harrisburg. “This beautiful farming countryside is Trump country,” I mused to myself.
With a compelling book to hand, Mack McCormick’s “Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey,” detailing the author’s travails through 1960s Mississippi in search of family and friends of the country blues legend, the hours flew by.
The business-class carriage was located next to the café car. The meals were hardly haute cuisine, rather adequate comfort food that was washed down with acceptable Pinot Grigio wine.
At one point, the conductor excitedly announced that we were approaching the World Famous Horseshoe Curve where Irish immigrant workers in the 1850s had constructed rail tracks from the side of the Allegheny Mountains. It was a sight I would never have savored from 35,000 feet in the air.
On past Amtrak trips, my trains had been held up for longish periods by freight convoys, including the Tropicana orange (blossom?) special from Florida. Passenger trains, it appeared, were playing second fiddle to the more profitable freights. For certain, Amtrak has suffered for years from underinvestment, lack of political will and poor reputation.
Still, our train, due in Pittsburgh at 7:58 p.m., was only 10-minutes late on a mellow sunlit evening. “Are there any taxi cabs at the station?” I asked the ever-polite conductors on my first visit to the reinvigorated Steel City. “Never seen any,” they said in unison.
With my Uber app on the blink, I tried the iPhone map and was delighted to find it was just a 10-minute walk up Grant Street to the conference hotel.
The closeness should have been no surprise. Amtrak rail and Greyhound bus stations were invariably built in or near city centers, not miles away on the outskirts. I found out later that taxi fares from the airport cost $60.
The music conference, after the pandemic hiatus, was good. Aside from seeing record-collecting and archivist friends old and new, there were excellent presentations on Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, pioneering blues pianist Leroy Carr and Pittsburgh disk jockey Porky Chedwick. A personal highlight was seeing the film, “How They Got Over: Gospel Quartets and the Road to Rock & Roll,” including a stunning black-and-white clip of the Consolers husband-and-wife duet from some 60 years ago.
And so the return journey to New York, starting out at 7:30 a.m., was more of the pleasant same, although on this occasion the Horseshoe Curve view was obliterated by, you guessed it, a freight train coming in the opposite direction.
Downhill with LIRR
The scheduled 4:50 p.m. Amtrak train arrived some 10 minutes early at Penn. There was a 5:10 LIRR train which meant a modest wait at Huntington for a Port Jeff connection but it avoided another change of train — and track — at Jamaica.
From here on, the journey went rapidly downhill. My trolley bag, indeed any suitcase, would not fit into the overhead rack. There was one pull-down seat but the space was taken up by a bicycle zealously guarded by its owner. I knew I would not be permitted to block the carriage walkway with my case. What to do? Luckily, a kind lady from Hudson Valley, on her way to JFK airport and London, made room for my bag — and me.
Consider this: LIRR is serving one of the world’s major airports yet is almost totally commuter focused. There is little or no thought given to travelers and their luggage. “Oh, for Amtrak’s business coach class,” I thought.
We arrived at Huntington on the opposite platform to the scheduled Port Jeff departure. “Use the elevator,“ the conductor helpfully announced. Not so fast. The contraption had broken down, not for the first time in my experience. And so I had to haul the trolley bag and myself up and down one of the long footbridges.
The train eventually limped into Stony Brook “on time” at 7:34 p.m. My journey from New York, allowing for the 36-minute stopover at Huntington, had taken 2 hours, 24 minutes — in the year of 2023. High-speed rail, anyone?
Is there any better argument for the electrification of the Port Jefferson Branch line – which services prestigious and populous Stony Brook University — along with a complete review of the LIRR system? How long are North Shore residents going to put up with a third-world rail service? Will the proposed Lawrence Aviation rail yard at Port Jeff Station happen? Yet there is no sign of any positive movement in the Metropolitan Transit Authority capital budgets, as the aging diesel trains continue to pollute the environment and potential riders take to the road in this age of climate change. I cannot forget I was spoiled by superefficient European trains in my younger life. America is a wonderful country, as I saw on my trip to Pittsburgh, but it deserves a better rail system everywhere. Meanwhile, our local elected officials — state, county, town, village — of every stripe should continue to lobby LIRR, MTA and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) for a 21st-century railroad for the future benefit of us all.
John Broven, originally from England, is a copy editor with TBR News Media, and author of three award-winning American music history books.
The new state program will use photo enforcement technologies to monitor speeding in work-zones. Following a 30-day grace period, violators will receive a fine by mail. Photo from Wikimedia Commons
New York State has introduced its Automated Work Zone Speed Enforcement program.
The system clocks vehicles traveling above the speed limit in specified work zones. A registered owner of a vehicle will be ticketed by mail if the posted work-zone speed limit is exceeded by more than 10 miles per hour, according to the legislation signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) in September, 2021.
The law states that the “owner of a vehicle shall be liable for a penalty” when that “vehicle was traveling at a speed of more than 10 miles per hour above the posted speed limit in effect within such highway construction or maintenance work area, and such violation is evidenced by information obtained from a photo speed violation monitoring system.”
The ny.gov website indicates that this new program will be “located in construction or maintenance zones on New York State controlled access highways and parkways.” It also indicates that signs leading up to the enforcement areas will make it clear that a driver is entering one.
In a phone interview, Stephen Canzoneri, a spokesman for Region 10 of the state Department of Transportation, said that there will be “two signs posted in advance of the camera.” He added that these cameras are “only being placed in active work zones where there are boots on the ground.”
During the first 30 days of the program —which began Monday, April 17, according to Canzoneri — New York State will issue warnings by mail instead of actual fines. After this initial warning period, drivers violating the posted work-zone speed limits in the enforcement areas will receive a $50 fine by mail.
For a second violation, a violator will receive $75 fine, so long as this violation is within an 18-month period of the first violation. Any third or subsequent violations will result in a $100 fine if, once again, these are within 18 months of the first violation.
The website also states that “there will be 30 work-zone speed units … that will be moved around to work zones throughout the state.” To see an up-to-date listing of where the speed cameras are currently being utilized, go to www.ny.gov/work-zone-safety-awareness/automated-work-zone-speed-enforcement-program and scroll down to “Locations” on the left-hand side. The cameras are “being placed on the limited access highways, such as the Long Island Expressway, Northern State Parkway, a portion of Sunrise [Highway] in central Suffolk,” Canzoneri said.
The ny.gov website clarifies that drivers will not receive points on their licenses for violations in these zones and that these penalties are strictly “civil in nature, with no criminal implications.”
In 2021, there were 378 “work-zone intrusions” and that more than 50 of these intrusions resulted in injury for either a highway worker or a vehicle occupant. “A work-zone intrusion is defined as an incident where a motor vehicle has entered a portion of the roadway that is closed due to construction or maintenance activity,” the ny.gov website states.
“We are seeing an increase in work-zone intrusions throughout the Island,” Canzoneri said. “More people are back on the roads after the COVID shutdowns. And traffic patterns are returning to what they were. And unfortunately, it means that there’s more danger for our workers on the road.”
In a phone interview, Jaime Franchi, Long Island Contractors’ Association director of communications and government relations, said, “Anything that is a deterrent that makes people pause while they’re driving in a zone where our highway workers are vulnerable is something that we would absolutely advocate for.”
Franchi added that LICA has been advocating for highway safety for many years, particularly on winding stretches of the Southern State Parkway. “They deserve to get home to their families,” Franchi said about highway workers.
Canzoneri agreed. “We want everybody to go home at the end of the day to be with their families,” he said.
The ny.gov website indicates that this five-year program is a joint effort by the state Department of Transportation and the state Thruway Authority.
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