What Happened
State and Suffolk County officials on September 15, 2026, called for a third lane in both directions on Sunrise Highway, targeting a stretch of more than 10 miles between Exit 53 at Route 112 in Patchogue and Exit 59 at Wading River Road, according to News 12 Long Island. The proposal centers on the point near Exit 53 where Sunrise Highway drops from three lanes to two, creating a daily chokepoint in eastern Suffolk County.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine put the peak problem window at 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. “If you come here about 4:30 to about 6:30, 7:00, you will find a jam up, as these three lanes slim down to two,” Romaine said, per News 12 Long Island. Patchogue resident Brian Kazaks told News 12 the backup becomes “pretty bad” at certain times of day.
State Sen. Dean Murray attributed the worsened congestion to pandemic-era population movement. “COVID, it appears that a lot of folks came from the city and moved out east,” Murray said. “With doing that, they brought with them a whole lot of traffic.” Murray said state funding is not an obstacle. “Trust me when I tell you we have a $277 billion budget,” he said. “The money’s there.”
The congestion has a direct consequence for emergency response. Dan Glen of the North Patchogue Fire Department told News 12 that routing an ambulance, a fire truck, or any emergency apparatus through that traffic is “absolutely horrendous.” Middle Island resident Rob Morris said he witnessed the problem directly. “I saw the first responders,” Morris said. “They were having a tough time getting down. Everybody had to pull into the shoulder just to get them down the middle lane.” News 12 reached out to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office for comment and had not received a response as of the report’s publication at 5:10 p.m. on September 15.
Location & Road Context
The proposed project runs along Sunrise Highway (NY-27) in Suffolk County, from the Route 112 interchange at Exit 53 in Patchogue east to the Wading River Road interchange at Exit 59. That corridor covers territory in the Town of Brookhaven across more than 10 miles of roadway.
According to Long Island Traffic’s incident registry, Sunrise Highway has logged 19 recorded incidents in the past 30 days and 94 so far in 2026, making it one of the busier corridors tracked in Suffolk County. The most recent prior fatal crash on the corridor occurred on August 10, 2026. Long Island Traffic’s local incident database contains 981 recorded accidents in Suffolk County overall. Also on September 15, a crash on NY-112 near the southern terminus of the proposed widening was reported as a separate minor incident.
Broader Impact
The North Patchogue Fire Department’s concern about apparatus access on this segment is specific and on the record: Glen’s department relies on Sunrise Highway to reach emergencies east of the Exit 53 interchange, and the two-lane bottleneck forces emergency vehicles into the shoulder or blocks them behind stopped traffic. A third lane in each direction, if funded and built, would give fire and EMS a continuous three-lane road from Route 112 east to Wading River Road. No construction timeline or formal Albany bill number had been released as of the News 12 report filed at 5:10 p.m. on September 15, 2026.