kaos joe

I think Zacster is correct. We are talking about 2 different bridges on the Robt. Moses Causeway. The Gardiner County Park being discussed is in Bay Shore, not on Fire Island. Linking that to the path that now ends in Captree would require a lane or path on the northern span, not the southern one that leads to Fire Island. That said, I'm amazed that ANY of this has come to pass.

zacster

What my "research" shows is that the RM Causeway from the mainland is two separate roads and bridges, one for each direction, and the northbound side is 3 lanes wide and the SB is 2 lanes. My guess is that they will just take a lane from the NB side as it isn't necessary at all, even on beach days. I've driven to RM beach many times and going to the beach is slow because the bridge (the one that connects to Fire Island) is very narrow and only 2 lanes, one in each direction. They will have the bridge be one way in the morning on busy days sometimes just to get the traffic through, but I've never had problems leaving RM beach. I just can't see them doing anything to this bridge to allow bikes although anything is possible with $$$. And once on Fire Island they would need to build a path also, which would be nice, maybe out to the lighthouse. Wasn't Lighthouse Beach the nude beach at one time? Or even better, a bike path out all the way to Watch Hill on the eastern end. Beyond Watch Hill is actually considered wilderness by the NPS.

Steve B.

A paved or even gravel path east of the Lighthouse is very, very, unlikely, as portions of this are not National Seashore, but are instead incorporated villages. Thus highly complicated to get these municipalities on board for such a project.

zacster

I know all about them, Kismet, OBP, OB, The Pines, Davis Park... When I was young I did a summer share at Davis Park for a bunch of summers, until it seemed like all the houses were being rented by families instead. Then we had kids ourselves and that was that.

One day, I think it was Columbus Day, I had to go to work while everyone else was staying out at FI because they had the day off. To catch a train that would get me to the office at a reasonable time I had to take the earliest ferry out, but the Davis Park ferry was at that point in the season only one or two runs for the day, but The Pines had an early boat for just that reason. I woke up before dawn and trudged through the sand on "Burma Road" all the way to the Pines, about 2-3 miles, in the dark. And you know how difficult it can be to walk in the sand. At some point when it got a little light out I went down to the shore to walk on the harder sand. There were plenty of people waiting for that boat, and then the train. I got to the office around 10 only to find that half the people took the day off anyway.

I just checked and the distance is actually 4.2 miles. If you look at google maps it shows "Dune Road" and "Center Walk" as solid but it is just sand outside of the towns. Only in Water Island did I get back on boardwalk for a short distance.

Steve B.

I had acquired some book a few decades ago of "Mountain Biking in New York". This is back 35 years ago when there were very few dedicated trails anywhere One route was to ride Fire Island in the the winter when its very cold and the sand is frozen. I tried this. The sand was not very frozen and it was mostly "push-a-bike" for a many miles thru assorted communities before I finally hit the FINS. There the sign said No Bikes. It seems a particular condition needs to be met to ride on frozen sand. 1) It needs to have rained recently. 2) The temps then need to drop quickly and to a very low temp, which then allows the sand to freeze solid and be ridable. I assume these were the conditions the author of the book encountered. They were not the conditions I encountered.