Dan's Papers - June 26, 2009 - RULE UPHELD: CAR FERRY NIXED IN EAST HAMPTON

There won't be ferry boats from afar loaded with cars landing in Montauk, Amagansett or East Hampton anytime soon. Last week, an appeals court ruled in favor of East Hampton's Town law that rejects car ferries from tying up here. So unless the plaintiffs want to take the matter to the State Supreme Court, that is the end of it.

The Town law banning car ferries in East Hampton Town was passed 10 years ago. It came about because of a proposal made by the Cross Sound Ferry company, awash in money from taking customers between Orient and New London (and Foxwoods), to cut out the middleman and take people directly to New London from a dock in the Hamptons.

The middleman to be cut out in this case was Shelter Island. Seen from the perspective of New London and Foxwoods, the only way for Hampton gamblers to get from the Hamptons to Connecticut was by using Shelter Island as a doormat. From the Hamptons, you'd take the South Fork Ferry ride to Shelter Island, drive across Shelter Island to the North Fork Ferry ride to Greenport and then drive to Orient for the Orient Point Ferry to New London. You had to be a real heavy hitting gambler to put up with that sort of ordeal, as charming and rural as it might be. Surely the Shelter Islanders hated watching everybody go zipping by without stopping. And all in all it was three hours to Foxwoods or New London any way you looked at it.

A ferry boat ride from either Montauk or Amagansett direct to New London could be done in an hour and 45 minutes. As for the other way, you'd have the return trip plus all those New Englanders who would like to see the sights in the Hamptons. This could work out really well for those in Connecticut.

The rumblings at that time in East Hampton amounted to "No thank you, we would rather not have boatloads of tourists riding their cars off ferries from New England onto the treasured lanes and paths of our precious Hamptons to trample the flowers."

A few years went by with the application for a vehicle dock in East Hampton languishing, at which time a local Montauk fishermen decided to throw his net into the ring. From his perspective, it looked like there might be a new business developing to bring people with their cars into and out of the Hamptons. Indeed, one of the two places for which for permission was requested by Cross Sound was a dock at Montauk Harbor. Cars could disembark there and go racing down Flamingo Road, heading west for the chic and glorious Hamptons, or they could just get out of their cars and go fishing. (The other location for a car dock proposed was on the arc of Napeague Harbor, about 300 yards from the waterfront home of the publisher of the East Hampton Star. You can probably guess what that newspaper's position was about all this.)

In any case, Captain Paul Forsberg decided to build a giant ship called the Viking Superstar, which could either carry lots of cars or, until such approvals came through, lots of fishermen or sightseers. When the rumors were verified that he had indeed ordered the building of this ship, and that his immediate plans were to apply for a back and forth car ferry to Block Island, the peaceful and very remote island off Montauk that is serviced by car ferries from Newport, Rhode Island, the Town of East Hampton went nuts.

What it did was pass this controversial law. There could be no car ferries allowed to dock on its sacred shores.

And so the lawsuits arrived, asking that this law be overturned. At first, they came from CrossIsland and from Forsberg. Then they were joined by the Town of Shelter Island, which was now outraged by the idea that East Hampton could officially approve of the Shelter Island doormat status. Joining the suit was the Town of Southold on the North Fork, which includes Orient Point. How dare they not have car ferries? WE have car ferries. Who do they think they are? East Hampton, is who they think they are, that's who.

The four plaintiffs in this case argued that for East Hampton to block interstate auto ferry transportation was a breach of the federal obligation that everyone would have to share in seabound commerce.

East Hampton replied, essentially, that they were the Hamptons. There was only one road in and out of the Hamptons. Having car ferries at the other end would be the straw that would break the Montauk Highway's back. The Hamptons was just too much of a dead end, too long and skinny and fragile, to survive such a thing at its far end.

The District Court in Islip ruled in favor of the Town. And now the Appeals Court in Brooklyn has upheld the District Court's decision.

The Appeals Court, in its decision, says that the plaintiffs never really did make much of a case that there would be hardship of commerce if there were no car ferries allowed to bring people into the Hamptons. You could get here by plane or chopper or by Hampton Jitney or with the Long Island Railroad or by car and it was essentially a dead end, with a historic lighthouse at the end. Leave it that way.

I don't exactly know how I feel about this decision. There seems to me to be not as much said about people who want to leave the Hamptons to go to New England, which would balance out the desire of motorists to bring their cars here.

Perhaps the judges, by their decisions, are acknowledging the fact that the Hamptons is a far more desirable place than New England, and with this kind of link, more people would rush to come here rather than rush to go there.

It is, I think, a case of the glass half full or the glass half empty. As for commerce being upheld, I suppose you can argue there are just too many damn people going places at the present time and there ought to be more leaving well enough alone as far as that goes.