Traffic Experiment Set for County Road 39
Jay Schneiderman may have switched jobs from Suffolk County legislator to Southampton Town supervisor, but his concern for traffic congestion on the main corridor onto the East End remains.
Supervisor Schneiderman is focusing on the bottleneck that forms at the intersection of Country Road 39 and Tuckahoe Road, where there is a traffic light near the Stony Brook Southampton college campus. Anticipating more traffic when Southampton Hospital eventually moves from the village to the campus, he is looking at ways to improve that area.
Both the town’s and the county’s public works departments have suggested that the light itself may be the problem. It takes large trucks pulling heavy equipment a while to move after a red light goes green, Mr. Schneiderman said. One solution might be to build an underpass, he said, but, short-term, the town wants to tinker with the light.
A three-day test is planned for April 19 to April 21, a Tuesday through Thursday, during which the signal will be converted to a blinking yellow light for east and westbound traffic during the peak morning commute, 6 to 9 a.m. Officials will compare data gathered by county engineers, who make the eastbound trek during those times, to data collected the week before under normal conditions, on the same days of the week during the same times.
During the blinking-light test, left turns from Tuckahoe Road onto Country Road 39 and westbound left turns from 39 onto Tuckahoe Road will not be allowed. Also, drivers will not be permitted to move straight across the highway between the north and south portions of Tuckahoe Road.
“I would personally like to see a 10-minute reduction in time,” Mr. Schneiderman told the town board during a work session last Thursday.
Barricades would prevent drivers from certain traffic patterns, eliciting memories of the old “cops and cones” program, the predecessor to the widening of Country Road 39, which was completed in 2008. As a legislator, Mr. Schneiderman was behind that program, which began as a one-week test in 2006. It allowed for extra travel lanes during morning and evening rush hours.
“This is an experiment,” the supervisor said in response to concerns raised by the Tuckahoe School Board regarding student transportation routes. A blinking light would not be a long-term solution, he assured the board. “This is the beginning of the process, it’s not an end-all at all.”
There is a cost associated with the test program. The county would incur $6,000 in overtime, and Mr. Schneiderman recommended the town board free up enough money to reimburse the county.
Councilwoman Christine Scalera was not keen on that suggestion. “I appreciate the cost issue,” she said, but pointed out that 39 is a county road and the county is responsible for traffic tests. “I don’t know why we’d be bearing all the cost.”
Daniel J. Dresch, director of traffic engineering with the county’s Department of Public Works, who sat in on the discussion, said that if the test did not happen because the county declined to fund it, his department would have nothing on which to base a future recommendation. “The only way we ever considered the removal of the traffic signal is for the benefit of Southampton. Every spring, we hear from Southampton about traffic on County Road 39,” he said.
Mr. Schneiderman said he could ask Suffolk Executive Steve Bellone to approve the overtime costs. “We might get a positive answer. I don’t know.”
Ms. Scalera said she felt it was incumbent on the town board to explore it. John Bouvier, a councilman who joined the board in January, said he felt it would be money well spent. “If we’re successful, it gives us a brighter future.” The board needed to get “creative” to solve traffic woes, he said.
Beyond the “trade parade,” the daily morning commute many UpIslanders make to work east of the Shinnecock Canal, the traffic jams affect teachers, hospital employees, and town workers. “There’s a lot of our workforce that is stuck in that traffic.” Mr. Schneiderman observed. “Ten minutes may not sound like a lot of time, but it’s 10 minutes a day, that’s 50 minutes, almost an hour a week out of our lives. That’s why I think it’s an endeavor worth gathering the data.”
Before the test can occur, the town board has to pass a resolution. Members are expected to set a public hearing on the temporary restrictions next week, to be held on March 22 at 6 p.m.