Rally predicts tragedy if Rockaway Expressway is not finished

The lives of people in the Five Towns, Far Rockaway and adjacent South Shore communities are on the line because of the state’s continued delay in rebuilding State Route 878 — Nassau County’s infamous Rockaway Turnpike and Queens’ Rockaway Boulevard — said participants at a rally in Lawrence on Sunday.

Rabbi Elozer Kanner, coordinator of Hatazalah of Rockaways and Nassau County, spoke of families who stayed in their homes instead of evacuating during Hurricane Sandy because they did not want to brave the Rockaway Turnpike traffic. This put both themselves and first responders in danger, he said.

Local advocates want the Nassau Expressway, which exists in expressway form only as short appendages off the Belt Parkway and Van Vyck Expressway to the north and off the Atlantic Beach Bridge to the south, connected by an expressway-quality road past JFK and through Lawrence.

Gov. Cuomo has pushed back previously scheduled work until 2025.