Imagine driving several hundred miles, only to have the supposedly shortest part of your trip be the longest portion to drive.

That's what happened to us this past weekend, as we returned home to Long Island from covering the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore.

We had left the Baltimore city limits shortly after noon, and traveled up I-95 to Staten Island in just about three hours time. We weren't pushing. We weren't speeding. But the traffic flowed well and as we prepared to cross over on to Staten Island over the Goethals Bridge, we were sure we'd arrive home shortly.

Those turned out to be famous last words. While the traffic through Brooklyn and Queens was about what you'd expect on a sunny weekend afternoon, traffic just over the Nassau County border, in both directions, no matter what road you attempted to travel on, was just horrendous.

It was like a weekday rush hour combined with the kind of getaway weekend traffic one encounters before Memorial Day, the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving ¬ and this was on a Saturday, the middle of the weekend, when you'd assume travelers would already be where they wanted to go!

Sadly, the explanation for this traffic is all too clear ¬ Long Island, Nassau and Suffolk both, has been over-developed to the point of strangulation.

Each day, as we drive to the office, we pass a number of areas where pristine lots are being torn asunder to create new housing stock.

It's the property owners right, we're told. And yet, with each new building, with each new house that rises from the Island's fertile soil, comes a car, two cars, three cars... comes more wear and tear on the very things that once made this area one of the finest places to live anywhere.

How are these situations dealt with? Well, frankly, piecemeal. A road is widened here, outlandish transportation initiatives are posed there. All of which just increase the general stress level of the population, and again begins to erode the very reasons we came to love this place we call home.

It's time to step back, bite the bullet and completely rethink what's been done here over the course of the past 100 years. We're realistic enough to know the great harm already done will take years and years to remediate.

But if we don't start now, all hope for the Island, we fear, will be lost.

Daniel J. McCue