Peninsula Boulevard
Peninsula Boulevard is a major,  arterial road through southwestern Nassau County, Long Island, New York. It runs southwest-to-northeast between Cedarhurst connecting the Five Towns area to the Village of Hempstead – in addition to indirectly serving The Rockaways in Queens. 

For its entire length, Peninsula Boulevard is maintained by the Nassau County Department of Public Works as the unsigned County Route 2.

Route description

Peninsula Boulevard (CR 2) 
Peninsula Boulevard begins in Cedarhurst at Rockaway Turnpike (CR 257), near a connecting road to New York State Route 878 (Nassau Expressway), and runs through the Five Towns area, where it spends much of its journey running northeast and southwest as a four-lane undivided thoroughfare. In Hewlett, it becomes a divided highway at Franklin Street and then runs beneath a bridge for the Far Rockaway Branch of the Long Island Rail Road between Mill Road and Gibson Boulevard.  

After Gibson Boulevard, Peninsula Boulevard's median becomes wider as it winds towards Rockaway Avenue, only to return to its former stature a short distance later. Within Lynbrook, the road takes a sharp northern trajectory after the intersection with New York State Route 27 (Sunrise Highway) and almost immediately runs beneath Lynbrook Long Island Rail Road station. CR 2 returns to the northeast at South Niemann Avenue, and then intersects Merrick Road shortly thereafter and thence Ocean Avenue. 

After Ocean Avenue, CR 2 runs as a divided roadway along the southeastern edge of Hempstead Lake State Park. This divided portion was the original route of the Southern State Parkway before the parkway's current route was constructed across Hempstead Lake. Between Lakeview Avenue and the Southern State Parkway, it contains residential frontage roads on the east side, and pedestrian bridges over the road, the first being Lakeside Drive, and the second being North Village Avenue. The segment along North Village Avenue was a former segment of the Southern State Parkway. The second of these frontage roads ends at Mercy Hospital on the southeast corner of the interchange with the current Southern State Parkway at Exit 19 in South Hempstead. 

Beyond the Southern State Parkway, the road maintains its status as a divided highway even as it enters the Village of Hempstead, where it briefly turns east as it intersects Franklin, Greenwich, and Henry Streets. It is at the latter where the road turns back to the northeast to serve as the southern terminus of Clinton Street, which leads to Glen Cove Road, then intersects New York State Route 102 (Front Street), and finally terminates at New York State Route 24 (Fulton Street).

Bay Boulevard (CR 2A) 
Bay Boulevard is a short extension of Peninsula Boulevard in Cedarhurst. It runs from an intersection at Rockaway Turnpike (CR 257) to an industrial area just west of Nassau Expressway (NY 878).

History 
Peninsula Boulevard was constructed in the 1950s by Nassau County as one of its first major north–south arterial highways. The segment between Ocean Avenue in Lynbrook and the Bay Boulevard/Rockaway Turnpike intersection at the Cederhurst–Inwood border officially opened on July 11, 1954. During this phase of the construction of Peninsula Boulevard, the Long Island Rail Road's Far Rockaway Branch was elevated to pass above the road in Woodmere.

Route shields 
Peninsula Boulevard, along with all of the other county routes in Nassau County, became unsigned in the 1970s, when Nassau County officials opted to remove the signs as opposed to allocating the funds for replacing them with new ones that met the latest federal design standards and requirements, as per the federal government's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

Major intersections

References

External links
Peninsula Boulevard (AlpsRoads)
Peninsula Boulevard (Greater New York Roads)

Roads on Long Island
Transportation in Nassau County, New York