Gillen Touts $586K Road Safety Plan Funds

HEMPSTEAD, NY. — Hempstead Village got an early Christmas present from its congresswoman Monday, as U.S. Rep. Laura Gillen announced that the Village had received $586,000 to fund a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan. The action plan will allow the Village to audit safety on its roads and implement safety measures in “high-crash” corridors, Gillen’s office said.

The grant funding comes from the latest round of Department of Transportation Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grants. It’s the third SS4A award to come to Nassau County in recent years, DOT records show, with the County receiving $480,000 to fund an action plan in 2022 and the City of Long Beach receiving a $239,824 grant to develop its own action plan a year later.

“I’m proud to have fought for and secured this transformative funding that will help Hempstead develop a comprehensive road safety plan to prevent future tragedies and make our streets safer for everyone,” Gillen said. “Every seven minutes, a serious car accident occurs on Long Island. It’s unacceptable and I’ll continue to do everything I can in Congress to improve road safety for everyone in our community.”

The grant program that provided the funds is the product of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which defines "comprehensive safety action plan" as "a plan aimed at preventing transportation-related fatalities and serious injuries in a locality," including timelines for eliminating fatalities and injuries, analyses of crashes in a given area, gathering of community input and data to reduce dangerous traffic incidents. The end goal, the law reads, is to develop a "Toward Zero Deaths" plan.