Photo by T.J. Clemente

Cty Rd 39 Done, Traffic Jam Goes East

By Dan Rattiner

Well, as I am sure you have noticed, the construction on County Road 39 between the Lobster Inn and the Southampton 7-Eleven is now finished, except for a few details. It is five glorious lanes - two eastbound, two westbound and then in the middle separating them is a turning lane. It is a wonder of modern science, and the traffic, instead of bumper-to-bumper every morning, is now flowing free and fast. The traffic tie-ups on County Road 39 along there are a thing of the past.

Except for one thing. Because the traffic flows more quickly and more cars and trucks can get out east than before, the traffic farther east of this former bottleneck is now much worse. And it's only April.

What were we thinking? We have only two lanes from 7-Eleven to Montauk (except for turning lanes and a brief stretch in Wainscott), so what we have done here at vast expense is move a traffic jam seven miles farther east. The other Wednesday afternoon at 5 p.m., traffic stacked up at a standstill from the traffic light in Water Mill east of the Bridgehampton Commons. And as I said, it's only April. Wait until July!

Oh, I will concede that building these extra lanes does give the Hamptons, particularly Southampton, an economic shot in the arm. Cars now peel off in Southampton with ease to get to where they are going, and indeed the farther east you go, the less traffic there is as a result of that, at least by comparison.

The extra lanes also end the cone program, when policemen and highway workers put out orange traffic cones to form a temporary third eastbound lane for eight months a year. This was a dangerous business, with all those people on the road putting the cones out in the dark at 6 a.m. and then picking them back up at 9 a.m. It also ends the perception, held universally in recent years, that getting in and out of the Hamptons is something that is almost impossible. And it also ends a tremendous expenditure of extra gasoline used by cars in traffic jams, and it ends the lost wages that locals experienced trying to get to work here at 9 a.m. but arriving at 10 a.m.

Still, as I said, though traffic on the easterly two lanes is proportionally less than the traffic on the five westerly lanes of the Montauk Highway, there is now a whole lot more traffic out east. The Hamptons is the Hamptons, after all. And if you build it, as the phrase goes, they will come. And so now, they do.

As a result of all this, there will be more commerce everywhere on the East End, but the cost of it will be an ever worsening parking situation, crowds on the back roads and an entirely greater and more urban way of life.

We asked for it. We got it. What were we thinking?

Back to Contents