By Brady Campbell, Staff Writer
LIU Post is located in an accessible part of Long Island for students traveling from Nassau and Suffolk County, as well as New York City.
However, this also means that the journey to get to campus could be a long one, because it is located in one of the most populated areas in the country.
Junior actuarial science major Vincent Randazzo, who commutes from Bellerose, is adjusting to the post-COVID traffic by leaving himself enough time to get to campus so he does not risk being late to class.
“I wake up and then I make sure that I leave the house with an extra 25 to 30 minutes, because sometimes there is an accident or construction, so I make sure to leave myself time in case anything goes wrong,” Randazzo said. “I check my phone and put in the directions and see how much time it will take, so I use that as a guide for when I need to leave. But if I know that it is going to rain or snow, then I will usually try to leave a little earlier because I know a lot of people don’t know how to drive in the rain or snow.”
Over the last few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has begun to dissipate and many people have started to attend school and work in person again. These sudden changes have seemingly played a big role in the traffic jams seen in the big apple and on Long Island.
“There are definitely more people on the road and less parking spots available on campus,” junior fashion merchandising major Grace Catanese said. Catanese commutes from Franklin Square, in Nassau County. “Almost everybody is commuting now, because they don’t really have the option of staying online anymore.”
With New York City and the surrounding area passing Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and Houston as the most congested city in the nation as far as traffic goes, there is an unprecedented amount of traffic in the tri-state area. Since New York City is one of the most populated cities in the world year round, the city that never sleeps seemingly is only getting more crowded.
“I feel like a lot of people have moved here over the years,” Catanese said when discussing the overcrowding of roads on the island and in the city. “I feel like there is so much opportunity in New York that so many people moved here, especially since COVID.”
The 2020 census showed that the populations of all five boroughs of New York city, as well as Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester counties have all increased since 2010.
Randazzo believes that the population changes have a direct impact on traffic congestion in the New York City metro area.
“Especially because New York City and Long Island are so heavily designed around using a car and there really isn’t great public transportation infrastructure. We have a lot of better public infrastructure than other states but that is only because we are close to the city. Long Island is quite literally designed around having a car to get to places, so it makes it easier on people to travel around this region.”
Junior business management major Lauren Ritirato agrees with this sentiment, although says that COVID may have played a part in these population changes.
“I feel like it’s hard to make a correlation with COVID being in the mix because people were off the road and now people are back on the road and there is an increase of people living in the city. So, I feel like it is a combination of everything that has led to more people moving to this section of the country,” she said.
Ritirato understands the difficulty of spreading out the means of transportation, and hopes that public transportation is more readily available, especially on Long Island.
“I know that it’s really hard on Long Island to use public transportation because I just feel like it’s not as accessible, especially the farther you go out on the island as you get further away from the city. So I definitely think maybe working those initiatives into Long Island policies and state sponsorships and just trying to get the word out there for that would be good to give people more options.”
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