A Call for Highway Crosswalks

Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman is one of the many drivers who try to avoid Bridgehampton’s Main Street. He told the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday night that he is thinking about ways to fix the standstill that so often afflicts the area, while also improving pedestrian safety.

State officials recently secured $700,000 for improving pedestrian safety in Bridgehampton, which the town will be able to use to install and improve crosswalks and for lighting enhancements. Plans to make improvements have long been discussed, but the death of Anna Pump, a chef, cookbook author, and owner of the Loaves and Fishes shop, after she was struck while crossing Main Street at the Bridgehampton Post Office at night in October, heightened awareness of the problems along the busy corridor.

But what would be the solution in a hamlet that struggles with both pedestrian safety and traffic flow? The town will have to decide how to use the money — and work with the state, since Montauk Highway is a state road.

“I love downtown Bridgehampton,” Mr. Schneiderman said, but the traffic causes him to veer north or south around the backlog. He is concerned that traffic is being forced onto residential streets as a bypass, and would like to explore putting in a series of four crosswalks at the intersection of Montauk Highway, Ocean Road, and the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, where a streetlight already exists.

Adding lights along the rest of Main Street to allow for pedestrian crossings is not the answer, Mr. Schneiderman said. “You don’t want to shut down Main Street completely and force traffic onto other roads.” Existing crosswalks not located at traffic lights already cause a logjam anytime someone feels like stepping across the road, creating “an almost constant interruption of flow,” he said.

Instead, he would like to work with engineers to figure out how to configure crosswalks at the light at the main intersection, which includes a tricky spot, north to south, by the Founders Monument, which sits in the middle of the highway, where a wide angle turns off onto Ocean Road. Several members of the C.A.C. said they couldn’t see a crosswalk working at the monument, even though Mr. Schneiderman said an engineer could figure out how to make the monument part of a grassy area.

“I have looked at this with traffic engineers and they said this could be done,” he said.

His plan could include eliminating the illuminated crosswalk in front of the Hampton Library, about 100 feet west, to force pedestrians to walk down to the corner. While that crosswalk has long been in existence, the illumination was added less than a year ago at the library’s request, to the tune of nearly $80,000. As part of his overall plan, Mr. Schneiderman said he would add illumination to the crosswalk in front of Thayer’s Hardware, and possibly more by the Post Office.

By the Candy Kitchen, on the corner of School Street and Montauk Highway, where there is a yellow blinking light, in part for the Bridgehampton Fire Department, which is located just up the block on School Street, Mr. Schneiderman’s idea is to put a signal there, but not a regular traffic light. The signal would stay green to allow traffic to move from east to west, and pedestrians would have to push a button when they want to cross.

Pamela Harwood, the chairwoman of the C.A.C., said she was almost run over in the crosswalk at the Candy Kitchen last year. The driver was looking down at his phone, even though there was a traffic control officer in the crosswalk. After the car stopped and she continued across the street, “then a bicyclist tried to bypass the stopped car, again nearly killing me.” Ms. Harwood said there was nothing the T.C.O. could do, as they aren’t allowed to issue tickets for moving violations. More police officers are needed, she told the supervisor.

Mr. Schneiderman said Bridge­hampton is one of the few hamlets with a substation; one is in the Bridge­hampton Commons. He said he would relay the message to the town’s Police Department that the group wants a more visible police presence. He assured the committee that he has been having conversations with police officials, as well as the candidates to take over as the new Southampton Town police chief, about instituting more foot and bicycle patrols.

One woman said she wouldn’t let her children ride their bicycles to the beach because of the traffic.

There is “no consideration of the pedestrian in Bridgehampton. It’s an abomination for a community that is as wealthy as this to pay so little attention to it,” said Peter Wilson, a committee member.

Even though an application for a mix of commercial, retail, and residential space, which would have included an affordable housing component, on the property known as the Bridgehampton Gateway, across from the Commons, is off the table, the C.A.C. is still thinking about affordable housing.

Mr. Wilson and Nancy Walter-Yvertes said they are taking part in a committee put together by Julie Lofstad and John Bouvier of the town board to come up with suggestions for housing opportunities. The committee is just getting started, but Mr. Wilson said they would come back to the C.A.C. with some ideas.

He said it was unfortunate that the town allowed a pre-existing nonconforming house with six apartments in it to be torn down for a McMansion. The price tag had been $2.5 million.

“I can’t spend $400,000 per unit,” Mr. Schneiderman said.

The supervisor mentioned his idea to establish a program to allow homeowners to create affordable apartments in their houses on smaller lots. The apartments would have to be rented to people who meet certain income qualifications and who are already working in the area. He wants to try 25 units and see how it goes, focusing on school districts with declining enrollments.

Peter Feder, a C.A.C. member, said when he lived in Manhattan he used to commute 40 minutes to work on Wall Street by taking three subways. He said it seems as if people who were born and raised in Bridgehampton think there’s “a birthright” to live there.

“There’s no birthright,” Mr. Schneiderman said, but there is a labor demand. If people don’t live here, they will live farther west and commute in, leading back to the traffic problem. The economic and cultural diversity “is part of a soul of the community,” he said. “If a community becomes all one income bracket, to me it’s a less interesting place to live.” A balance is necessary, he said, to a small round of applause.

A woman in attendance said she would prefer it if Bridgehampton’s volunteer firefighters lived nearby and weren’t coming from Hampton Bays.