As we were sitting in bumper-to-bumper, stopped dead, mad rush to the beach, Fourth of July weekend, did-you-not-get-the-memo-the-fireworks-were-canceled traffic on the Southern State Parkway, as the A/C started a downhill battle with 100 degree humid air, and Ke$ha’s “You’re Love is My Drug” came on for the 1,362,982nd time, we noticed something. In addition to the shameless man in the blue bathing suit relieving himself roadside, there were a lot of brand new Adopt-a-Highway signs. The last time we noticed these was more than a decade ago when Cosmo Kramer adopted mile 114 of the fictional Arthur Berkhardt Expressway in NYC through the Adopt-a-Highway program and blacked out the yellow lane-lines to make the four-lane highway a two-lane “comfort cruise.”
THE ADOPT-A-HIGHWAY PROGRAM
You can’t pull a Kramer, but you can make a section of the highway pretty—by picking up litter, planting flowers, mowing the lawn, etc. Anyone can adopt a highway. All you have to do is commit to picking up garbage along your section, usually two miles long, at least four times each year for two years. The New York State Department of Transportation will supply the appropriate orange safety gear, trash bags and pick up. Your efforts will be rewarded with a blue and white Adopt-A-Highway sign with your name, company or organization logo, picture, and whatever else on it. To adopt a stretch of highway in Nassau or Suffolk counties, contact Reynold Wilson, Regional Adopt-A-Highway coordinator, at 631-952-6702.
THE SPONSOR-A-HIGHWAY PROGRAM
If you want all the glory and advertising advantages of having your sign seen by the driving public on Long Island 24/7, 365 days per year, without having to do any work at all, that’s where the East Coast Highway Maintenance Corporation of Southampton comes in. Pick your 1-mile stretch of highway on the Long Island Expressway, Sunrise Highway, Seaford Oyster Bay Expressway, Northern State Parkway or Southern State Parkway and they will give you a sign and clean your stretch of highway two to four times per month. Visit www.echmc.com/liroads.html, call 1-888-284-8438 or e-mail [email protected] for more information.