Neighbors Foresee a Traffic ‘Disaster’
Residents of Osborne Lane and adjacent streets in East Hampton gave the East Hampton Village Board an unqualified thumbs-down assessment of the small parking lot under construction at 8 Osborne Lane, a property the village purchased and on which a house was recently demolished, at the village board’s meeting on Friday.
But, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. noted, the four who addressed the board are residents of the town, and the speeding and heavy-truck traffic on Osborne Lane about which they complained mostly fall outside the village’s jurisdiction. The lot is within the roughly 300-foot length of Osborne Lane that lies within the village’s footprint, from Newtown Lane to the Long Island Rail Road track.
The 21-space parking lot, which will be completed by the spring, is adjacent to a parking lot serving 88 Newtown Lane, which houses the offices of the village’s historic services director, planner, and historic site manager, and across Osborne Lane from a cluster of commercial establishments, which likewise has its own parking lot. The residents’ comments came during a public hearing on a proposed law to set a two-hour limit in the new lot between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.
“Some of us think the additional lot is a big problem,” said Naomi Salz of Osborne Lane. In the summer, it is already nearly impossible to turn from Osborne onto Newtown Lane, she said. To add both ingress and egress, so close to the track, to the new parking lot “is very dangerous, considering what goes on in that small area,” she said.
East Hampton Middle School students, she said, walk or cycle to and from school on Osborne Lane. At the same time, the street has become a “highway to Springs-Fireplace Road.” The “biggest trucks you could imagine” travel on Osborne Lane, “and everybody speeds like crazy,” she said, with scant police patrols.
Moreover, she said, the lot serving 88 Newtown Lane “is not used that much at all.” She suggested that the new lot be merged with the one serving 88 Newtown Lane, where some spaces are reserved for village employees. “Consider closing the in-and-out situation so close to the railroad tracks,” she said. Otherwise, the new lot “is going to be a disaster area.”
Jack Ceglic of Huntting Avenue, a dead-end street off Osborne Lane near the railroad tracks, said he is very familiar with traffic patterns after living there for 38 years. “The situation is there are three parking lots that empty out just before the railroad,” which he called “very, very dangerous.” Traffic is backed up trying to turn onto Newtown Lane in the summer, he said, preventing vehicles from entering and exiting the existing lots. He, too, suggested merging the new lot with the adjacent existing one, or with the middle school lot. “It’s not big enough, it’s not in a very strategic place where it makes sense for the village. . . . Allowing this traffic to empty onto a neighborhood street,” he said, is “a very, very difficult situation that you’ve created.”
Truck drivers “are speeding enormously” on Osborne Lane while children are going to and returning from the middle school, said Leni Salz. “All these kids have phones and are looking at them, so they’re not looking out to see who’s coming and where they’re coming from.” Elderly people also walk on Osborne Lane, she said. “It’s kind of frightening to me. . . . I wish you would consider keeping one lot, one entrance and exit.”
The village purchased the property, the mayor told the speakers, because “We have a parking deficit within the footprint of the village commercial business core. This was an opportunity that I and my colleagues felt — when it became available — would allow us to put some additional parking in place.”
He did agree that some of the concerns expressed are valid, but the larger issue, he said, was that “we felt this was in the best interests of village residents,” while those critical of the plan live in the town. “Once you go across the railroad tracks, ladies and gentlemen, you’re within the footprint of the Town of East Hampton.”
The Osborne Lane residents’ concerns about commercial vehicles and speeding will be conveyed to the town, the mayor said. “But again, we have no jurisdiction. The vast preponderance of the footprint of Osborne Lane is within the footprint of the town, and I think you recognize that.”
“But we are listening,” the mayor said. With that, the hearing was closed.