Sag Harbor Village police have stepped up their patrols of narrow village roads on the lookout for oversize commercial trucks, which are prohibited from using certain streets unless they are making local deliveries.
Eighteen such enforcement stops over the last 10 days yielded only one ticket, issued on Oct. 4 at the corner of Main Street and Palmer Terrace just before 7 a.m. Officers have also conducted stops on Union Street, Jermain Avenue, and elsewhere.
“There’s a code on the books for vehicles over 10,000 pounds using them as a throughway,” Chief Austin J. McGuire said yesterday. “People have been complaining about it. We’re trying to catch up and do something about it.”
For now, he said, most of the stops have been informational in nature. “These people are just trying to work for a living. . . . They are not aware of the regulation,” the chief said. “We’re stopping the trucks to let them know. We’re not trying to hurt anybody.”
Also, he said, “The amount of cars coming through the village is ridiculous.” Over the span of eight days in mid-August, a vehicle-counting device placed near the entrance to the village on Route 114 recorded just under 116,000 cars and trucks passing through.
“We have so much [traffic],” Chief McGuire said, “that unless they expand Route 27 in each direction, it’ll be this way. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”