East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen announced a plan to reconfigure parking spaces on Newtown Lane and along the perimeter of the Reutershan parking lot from parallel to angled drive-in parking at a board meeting on Friday.
During his campaign for mayor last year, Mr. Larsen had touted a reconfiguration plan that he had developed in collaboration with a traffic consultant. Making the changes, he said, would create several new spaces, and make it easier for less-accomplished drivers to park on Newtown Lane. After taking office in September, he asked Drew Bennett, the village's consulting engineer, to flesh out the proposal. Mr. Bennett presented his work to the board on Friday.
The Reutershan lot now contains 318 spaces, Mr. Bennett said. Re-striping the parallel parking spaces on the northern and eastern sides of the lot would create six more, and removing a traffic island in front of John Papas Cafe, an additional seven. To improve traffic flow, the lot's north-south traffic lanes, would be made one way.
"That seems like a lot of work for not a lot of spaces," said Arthur Graham, a trustee. Mr. Bennett said the restriping would be simple and inexpensive, but agreed that the removal of the traffic island would require far more work.
The village has proposed charging nonresidents to pay for parking in the lot, and, as part of that plan, the spaces along the perimeter would allow for at least 30 minutes of free parking, Mr. Larsen said. "I think that's important to try to get done this year," he said of the re-striping.
On Newtown Lane, parking spaces would be reconfigured on both sides of the street between Park Place and Main Street, and result in an increase of 13 spaces. To accommodate the angled parking, striped mid-street pedestrian safety zones would have to be removed, as would a left-turn lane for westbound traffic turning onto Park Place. For much of the eastbound stretch between Park Place and Main Street, the two existing lanes would be reduced to one, but closer to the intersection with Main Street, a lane for those seeking to make right turns would remain and would accommodate about six cars, Mr. Bennett said. The village could also consider allowing both left and right turns from that lane, he said.
Mr. Graham and his colleague Rose Brown said the proposal threatened to create a bottleneck on Newtown Lane. "We have two travel lanes that back up even now, if we reduce that to one, I'm concerned that we're going to back this up to the high school," said Mr. Graham. "We've all sat in that traffic all the way in front of Stop and Shop waiting for the light to turn, I just don't want to exacerbate that congestion," Ms. Brown said. They also noted that drivers backing up out of angled parking spaces into oncoming traffic could be dangerous and could cause even more congestion.
Mr. Bennett agreed that the two lanes get backed up now, but said it was mostly caused by drivers who emerge from the Park Place exit from the Reutershan lot and attempt to enter the lane for left turns onto Main Street. The right-turn lane, he said, is not heavily used.
While acknowledging that there were "pros and cons" to the proposal, Mayor Larsen said most drivers on Newtown Lane are looking for a place to park rather than driving through, and the reconfiguration would make it easier for them to find and maneuver into a space. The removal of one lane of traffic would make it safer for pedestrians using the crosswalks, he said, and allowing drivers at the intersection to make a left turn from either lane on the eastbound side would alleviate congestion.
"I think it's worth a shot, I think we should try it, it's just striping," he said. Chris Minardi, the deputy mayor, and Sandra Melendez, a trustee, agreed. "It sounds like we have a majority to move on so I would like to get some pricing going on this," said Mr. Larsen.
