Ummm,,, my apologies to Billy.
Somewhere I possibly could have mentioned that the LIE stretch from Washington to Sunnyside and down to Woodbury has hills. Sucks that it came at the end of what I'm certain was a long day. As well, you somewhat notice, but subtly, that it's all an uphill grade on the BP path from about Hempstead Ave. north, as you do climb maybe 200-300 ft. It can drag on you and then you hit the LIE.
I am totally impressed that you did this ride. It's a pretty good distance and I would not have been able to do this at this point int he riding season (I'm currently good for about 32 !).
@
Tom. The option for the BP extension was to continue thru and on the BP Parkway ROW - or what is now known as Trailview, north of the LIE I don't know if you've ever mt. biked the Greenbelt or the now blue blazed mt. bike trail, north of the LIE, but it's all hills, up and down to Woodbury Rd. My understanding was it would have completely blown the budget and did not land cyclists anywhere near a LIRR station, unless they continued across and north of Jericho Tpk then diverted as on-street to the CSH LIRR station. The expense of grading the path in the hills was prohibitive and severely impacted on the existing Greenbelt hiking as well as CLIMB Mt bike trails, which would have needed extensive re-locating and interaction with the paved bike path.
The reason they needed to tie in to an LIRR station was the funding was ISTEA - Inermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, or federal funding that paid the bulk (or all) of the project, so a requirement, thus the on-street lane markings to Syosett LIRR, and supposedly to CSH LIRR as well (was never clear if they did that section).
FWIW, the TOBAY path extension, as well as the proposed extension to Captree, is all State of NY parks funding, as the ISTEA funding is all long gone and couldn't be used in this case anyway.