Farmers in Wainscott spoke up during the Feb. 18 East Hampton Town Board meeting to mostly reject a proposal for traffic-calming tools put forth by the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee.
The proposal came after the committee spent months brainstorming, analyzing, and refining ideas for how the town could step in to discourage drivers from speeding and from using the hamlet’s otherwise sleepy back roads as main thoroughfares to bypass Montauk Highway congestion. The committee ultimately wrote to town officials to suggest adding a handful of stop signs and crosswalks.
But farmers including Billy Babinski, Andy Babinksi, and Peter Dankowski objected to the proposal, saying it would create difficulties and unsafe driving conditions for their farm vehicles and other cars and trucks on those very roadways.
Billy Babinski said the committee’s proposal would “create a year-round burden” on farmers “to solve a part-time problem” on roads like Wainscott Main Street, Wainscott Hollow Road, Beach Lane, Sayre’s Path, and Wainscott Stone Road. “Making it more difficult to get around just hurts the people who are trying to make a living,” he said. “I have not seen any documentation that there is a safety issue.”
The citizens group has pitched adding crosswalks in all directions at the corner of Main Street and Wainscott Hollow Road, where the hamlet’s elementary school sits. Two crosswalks and two new stop signs have also been suggested at the intersection of Main Street and Beach Lane, where Lisa and Bill’s Farm Stand happens to be located. Also included in the pitch were two more stop signs and a crosswalk at the Y-shaped junction of Sayre’s Path and Wainscott Stone Road, and two stop signs and two crosswalks where Wainscott Northwest Road and Wainscott Stone Road meet.
Councilwoman Cate Rogers, the town board’s liaison to the citizens group, presented the recommendations to her peers. “We’re talking about roads that traditionally were not highway roads or meant for large volumes of traffic. It evolved that way because it happens to take you south of the highway,” she said during the presentation.
She later added, “There were a lot more [stop signs] proposed, but after reviewing the proposal, these turned out to be the areas that were considered most dangerous. . . . If you can’t reduce the flow, you can at least make it a little safer.”
The full proposal is described in a document that can be found in the Feb. 18 meeting materials section of the town’s website, ehamptonny.gov.
“The effort is to calm the traffic on Main Street and Wainscott Stone Road,” Hersey Egginton, chairman of the advisory committee, said during the meeting’s public comment session. There are drivers “who are avoiding Montauk Highway and traveling at virtually the same speed, which is far over the speed limit. . . . In the absence of other devices at our disposal, we would recommend stop signs in conjunction with pedestrian crosswalks.”
Billy Babinski objected, saying that “this burden affects no one more than the full-time locals like myself. It seems to me the stop signs are being used in a way that’s not truly intended. . . . A stop sign is meant to be used to assign right of way at an intersection, not control speeding.” He did say that one proposed stop sign, on Sayre’s Path, is a good idea, but dismissed the rest of the plan as “one mass proposal with the wrong motive.”
“I think the plan is not well thought out,” Andy Babinski added.
Mr. Dankowski said that “putting all these stop signs on all these corners in our hamlet over there I don’t think really makes a lot of sense. I travel those roads with wide farm equipment and truckloads of potatoes and whatnot that are heavy. If you’re stopping all the time, trying to get that truck moving again to get down the road is not particularly easy and you need a lot of room. If you have a stop sign, if I have to stop right there, next thing you know I’m going to cause a traffic jam.”
Outside of the farmers, the stop signs and crosswalks found favor among other Wainscott committee members and residents who spoke during the public comment period.
“I don’t want any stop signs or crosswalks . . . but the fantasy of the quiet country road is no longer a reality, and something must be done,” Carolyn Logan Gluck said. “Enforcement to this point, which we have asked for multiple times, is not working. The proposal put before you might not be perfect, but everyone has acknowledged it has some merit.”
Chief Michael Sarlo of the town police disagreed that enforcement is not working, and said there are very few accidents in this part of Wainscott. “We spend a tremendous amount of time down there — we’re a deterrent. We deter people from speeding,” he said. “We don’t have a ton of ticket data, but we have a lot of time spent deterring speeding.”
“I don’t think lots of stop signs are efficient and I don’t think they address the big picture. . . . You’re going to have people running stop signs when we’re not there,” Chief Sarlo continued.
The town board made no decisions during the meeting, agreeing that the matter needs further examination and discussion by the town’s Highway Department.
