Representatives from the Village of Roslyn Harbor and Tully Contracting continue to meet in order to resolve the traffic situation in that village, one that concerns the transportation of steal beams to the construction site on the Roslyn Viaduct.

On Tuesday, Nov. 21, there was a meeting between the two sides at the village hall in Roslyn. At issue is the over 400 truckloads of pre-formed concrete beams that need to be transported from Glenwood Landing to the Roslyn Viaduct, the bridge which is undergoing a major renovation project. The planned route will have the beams being transported from Glenwood Road to Bryant Avenue, a 1.3-mile route through a residential neighborhood.

"We want to make sure every option had been looked at short of going through Roslyn with these monumental things," said Roslyn Harbor Mayor Gerson Strassberg, referring to the trucks carrying the steal beams.

Mayor Strassberg said the interested parties would meet again on Thursday, Nov. 30. In the meantime, Tully, the mayor said, has agreed not to move any steal beams or other hardware to the site until that date.

"We explored a lot of ideas," the mayor said of the Nov. 21 meeting. The mayor again presented his idea of an alternative route, one in which the trucks would travel down West Shore Road in Port Washington, rather than driving through Roslyn Harbor.

According to Mayor Strassberg, representatives from Tully turned down that plan, claiming that their flatbed trucks could not make the turns onto the Roslyn Viaduct lane when using West Shore Road.

In addition, representatives from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation also rejected the West Shore route. DEC officials, Mayor Strassberg said, do not want any "turbulence" in or around the Viaduct, all in order to protect a special breed of turtles that congregate in that vicinity.

Mayor Strassberg also said that Tully representatives have supplied village officials with "books and pictures" relating to the transportation plan and the project in general. Considering the importance of the situation---some of the concrete sections, the mayor said, weigh up to 100,000 lbs.---village officials are hoping for a resolution by the end of this month or in the near future.

"The [Nov. 21] meeting was very positive and very cooperative," said Gerard Terry, an attorney for Tully Contracting. "Tully and the village worked through a list of issues, questions, and concerns that have been raised."

Looking towards the next meeting, Terry said "the level of communication and the level of sharing of information is one that is ordinarily associated with problems being resolved rather than problems being created."

Mayor Strassberg's concerns have been over the fact that the route from Glenwood Road to Bryant Avenue is not just in a residential neighborhood, but that up to 50 million pounds of such concrete will be transported.

The routes, the mayor has noted, will take place "three or four" times a night, throughout a 100-odd-night schedule. The runs are scheduled to be from midnight to 5 a.m. A police escort will accompany each route.

Still, village officials worry over the impact such routes would have on village roads, plus the concern that the trucks would block traffic lanes while making their runs.

The truck routes are part of a construction project on the Roslyn Viaduct, one that seeks to upgrade a bridge that was first built in 1948. Construction is expected to last until the spring of 2008. Until then, the bridge's four lanes have been reduced to three. Two westbound lanes are open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and two eastbound lanes are open from 3 to 10 p.m.