Bethpage State Parkway
The Bethpage State Parkway (or simply the Bethpage Parkway) is a 2.49-mile (4.01 km) controlled-access parkway in Nassau County on Long Island, New York, in the United States. It begins at a trumpet interchange with the Southern State Parkway in the village of North Massapequa and serves Boundary Avenue, NY 24, and Central Avenue before terminating at a traffic circle with Plainview Road and a local park road in Bethpage State Park. The parkway is designated as New York State Route 907E (NY 907E), an unsigned reference route. It is also ceremoniously designated as the Philip B. Healey Memorial Parkway for Assemblyman Philip B. Healey (1921–1996).
Bethpage State Parkway | |
|---|---|
| Philip B. Healey Memorial Parkway | |
Bethpage State Parkway highlighted in red | |
| Route information | |
| Maintained by NYSDOT | |
| Length | 2.49 mi (4.01 km) |
| Existed | November 14, 1936–present |
| Restrictions | No commercial vehicles |
| Major junctions | |
| South end | Southern State Parkway in North Massapequa |
| NY 24 in Farmingdale | |
| North end | Plainview Road in Bethpage |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New York |
| Counties | Nassau |
| Highway system | |
| |
The Bethpage State Parkway was first proposed by Robert Moses and the Long Island State Park Commission in 1924 to help get people from New York City to parks in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Construction of the parkway began in 1934, and the highway opened on November 14, 1936, along with the Laurelton Parkway (part of the Belt Parkway system) in Queens. The new parkway cost $1.04 million (1936 USD) to construct. Moses proposed extending the Bethpage in both directions, south to Merrick Road via Massapequa State Park and north to Caumsett State Park, via an extended Bethpage and the new Caumsett State Parkway, respectively. Both proposals were not constructed; however, bike paths leading away from both directions of the parkway have been constructed or are under construction. Several scaled-back proposals to extend the Bethpage north have been proposed, including an extension to NY 25A in Cold Spring Harbor and another to NY 135 (the Seaford–Oyster Bay Expressway) in Bethpage.
A bike path was constructed along the Bethpage State Parkway in the 1970s using the alignment once reserved for the southern extension and land along the east side of the current parkway. The Bethpage Bikeway, was extended from its original northern terminus to the Long Island Rail Road station in Syosset. The extension also uses part of the former Long Island Motor Parkway.