Long Island Sound’s beaches provide an important place for summer fun and cooling relief. But for some Long Island residents, a lack of transportation, parking fees, and parking pass eligibility prevent them from enjoying this natural resource. However, two researchers from Stony Brook University worked this summer to address the issue, one shuttle ride at a time.
Dr. Elizabeth Hewitt, Associate Professor in the Department of Technology and Society, and Dr. Anil Yazici, Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, partnered together to pilot a free shuttle service to West Meadow Beach in the Town of Brookhaven, New York. The research aimed at providing service to people without cars and for those may be unable to afford the town beach’s annual parking fee. It is funded by a 2022 Long Island Sound Study research grant of $479,083, with funds running out at the end of August.
“Our submission was a little unconventional,” said Dr. Hewitt. “Anil’s had this idea for quite some time, to pilot a shuttle bus in various ways and structures. This [grant program] was really a kind of opening for perhaps unconventional work on the Sound.”
Combining Dr. Hewitt’s social science and behavioral research background with Dr. Yazici’s transportation expertise, the pilot addresses issues of public access, machine learning and infrastructure, environmental attitudes, and impacts on Long Island from climate change. According to a report by Moody’s Research, Long Island faces a unique risk of warming temperatures and an associated increase in extreme weather events such as hurricanes and flooding. Nationally, it is ranked fourth among major American population centers for exposure to physical and economic risk from the changing climate, surpassed only by San Francisco, Cape Coral, Florida, and New York City.
“When we think about warming climates and we think about changing weather patterns, people need cooling stations,” said Dr. Hewitt. “We think of beaches as one such way to provide relief and cooling on very hot days. And of course, we expect that heat to become more extreme in the coming years and decades. We don’t know exactly what those patterns will look like yet, but we’re seeing some of it happening already. That was a big driver too for this project, thinking about the long-term impacts of increasing access.”
The shuttle officially started making trips on June 1 and has continued every weekend since. West Meadow Beach was selected for the pilot due to its location, ease of entry, and accessibility features like handicap ramps and free restrooms.
In addition to improving mobility and access to beaches on Long Island, the research also explored how interacting with the waterfront could shift public attitudes toward environmental action and conservation.
“Systems thinking is believing that all these parts are interconnected with each other,” said Mohammad Pourmatin, a PhD student in the Department of Technology and Society’s Technology, Policy, and Innovation doctoral program and one of two graduate assistants working on the project. “If one part faces a problem, all parts face it too. So, we are looking at this from a different perspective… If we provide more options for public transportation and equitable transportation, it can contribute to reducing energy consumption, emissions, and climate change.”
Pourmatin alongside Samuel Osei Poku, another graduate assistant helping with the shuttle pilot, joined community members each weekend, helping them to book future trips, carry their beach supplies, and engage in conversation about their opinions about natural spaces.
Osei Poku, a civil engineering student from Ghana, Africa, was eager to join the project, having known well the difficulties of navigating Long Island without a vehicle.
“I used to have to commute to campus, and it was so difficult getting around,” said Osei Poku. “It was during the rain time because I came here in the fall. I couldn’t bike to campus. Sometimes I would hop in a friend’s car.”
As an advisee of Dr. Yazici, Osei Poku studies smart civil infrastructure systems, the optimization and operation of transportation networks, and intelligent automated systems to support self-adaptive urban infrastructure. This study is being applied to the transportation engineering of the shuttle bus. Once receiving in-app requests, project partners at Flexigo analyze the requests and create a pickup route systematically, confirming if service can be provided or not based on the pickup location of each rider.
To drive interest and participation, Osei Poku and Pourmatin were also tasked with reaching out to communities around West Meadow Beach through tabling and passing out flyers, which are printed in both English and Spanish.
“They have been going to churches, libraries, grocery stores, public bus stations…pretty much anywhere that we felt could catch people who don’t have a car or might find interest in our service,” said Dr. Hewitt.
The shuttle holds ten people, and has only had a few riders each weekend, according to Dr. Hewitt. But despite seeing lower numbers than anticipated during the pilot period, the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.
“Last weekend, there was a group of older people, and looking at the smiles on their faces. They can meet with their friends on the same beach that they haven’t seen for a long time,” said Osei Poku.
“They are very happy about it,” Pourmatin added. “It’s more convenient for them.”
With support from LISS’s New York Outreach Coordinator at New York Sea Grant, Jimena Perez-Viscasillas, Dr. Yazici and Dr. Hewitt nurtured project partnerships during the pilot, with two community groups—OLA of Eastern Long Island and Dare to Dream. The latter recently booked the entire shuttle for event programming on the beach.
“I told my professors, that if we have event outreach, we are doing they can call me and I can help set up a table,” said Osei Poku. “The beach is for everybody. It is not for limited people.”
Dr. Hewitt hopes that the research pilot helped to shift how people on Long Island view public access and equity.
“We hope people see it as a service that can provide access and that this is the kind of thing that should be happening all over,” said Dr. Hewitt. “This shouldn’t be just a pilot project. We’re hoping that having something like this and increasing awareness of the service, normalizes it a little bit and makes it seem like something people should always be able to access.”