Dan's Papers - October 6, 2006

I would like to know who dreamt up this idea of shutting down all the shortcuts on County Road 39 this September? It must have been thought up in August. The program to use traffic cones to make the center passing lane a one-way eastbound lane during the rush hour in the morning had been an enormous success. People were surging through to work. But the funding was coming to an end.

Should the funding be renewed? The cost of this program, to put the cones out at 5:30 a.m. and then remove them at 9:30 a.m. was $7,000 a week. Somewhere in the bowels of the County Center in Hauppauge, this question about what to do when the funds run out must have been posed to the traffic people in August. They thought and they thought.

They must have remembered how in July, everybody had emitted a huge cheer and clinked champagne glasses as the great traffic tie up that has cursed the East End every morning for years suddenly dissolved. There would be no more desperate attempts by motorists to gain an edge by finding alternate ways to get to work in the Hamptons by taking shortcuts. They could just use County Road 39 itself. What a treat!

So what do we do, the County bureaucrats must have asked? Extend the wildly successful third lane cone program into September, October and November? Or, I know, a hot shot traffic engineer must have said, let's bring things back to the way they were before the third lane program where we had all the traffic jams, but add a new twist, by physically SHUTTING DOWN ALL THE BACK ROAD SHORTCUTS. This suggestion must have been received, at first, with total silence.

"Hear me out. Believe me, I have heard this has worked up in Elmira. It will work," he must have continued. "We put up signs, do not cross double line hash marks, one way arrows and concrete barriers where all the shortcuts return to County Road 39. And THEN ALL THE TRAFFIC HAS TO FUNNEL INTO THE TRAFFIC JAM."

"Know what causes this traffic jam? It's all these shortcut people coming back to County Road 39 and cutting back into the flow of traffic. The cars on the highway have to slow down to let them in. So we put a stop to that. That's it! That's the answer! A clean one lane shot down County Road 39 with no stopping!"

And then a foreman must have stepped forward.

"All right everybody, that's the answer. Let's get busy identifying all those shortcuts. Who knows a few? There must be four or five. Let's identify them and we'll get the workmen out there to shut them down."

And so, beginning around August 25, all the hardhats, trucks, bulldozers and cranes could be seen on these narrow shortcut roads at the points where they come back into County Road 39. There were piles of sand. There were MEN WORKING signs. And slowly, over the next ten days, at a cost estimated in excess of a half a million dollars, the barriers were installed, the roads were blocked off or rerouted, the signs and arrows were put up, and the motorists, scooting by at high speed on the two lanes looked out at the work with worried expressions.

In a stroke of unbelievable optimism, the instructions to the construction workers included the order to LEAVE UP the sign on County Road 39 that had been put up in July after the traffic jam melted away, which read Slow Down, Speeders Will Be Ticketed.

Monday morning, September 11 was the big day. The blocking of all the shortcuts was completed and put into effect at 4 a.m. At 5 a.m., the workmen who every day had installed the third lane program with the traffic cones failed to appear, and at 6 p.m., the floodgates opened. Traffic immediately backed up for as much as four miles.

Somewhere at the County Center, perhaps on the second day after it was realized the hope that all the problem was that people needed to get used to this new thing was not happening, a man walked into a room full of highway department people sitting at computers.

He slapped his forehead.

"They call them SHORTCUTS! I GET it! Short Cut! As in you cut along a back road and things get shorter. THAT'S WHY THEY CALL THEM THAT! And we just TOOK AWAY the short cuts."

At that very moment, numerous motorists, sitting motionless in the traffic jam, stared at the sign reading Slow Down, Speeders Will Be Ticketed, and they had only one thought in their mind.

We have to find this guy, take him out back, and shoot him.

By Thursday afternoon, which was September 29, two weeks later and less than twelve hours before what was sure to be an angry meeting of the general public at Southampton Town Hall, the horrendous new traffic jam continued, but Steve Levy, the County Executive, promised swift action.

"I have asked Commissioner Dormer," he said, "to have the County Police Aviation Department order the launching of a helicopter to fly over County Road 39 for half a day to observe the situation. The pilot will be accompanied by two county officials, a member of the Southampton Town Police Department, who will advise the county officials, and a video technician who will video the problem and will, afterwards, arrange to edit it and have it shown so we can study it and determine the best future action to mitigate this problem. We're committed to this action."

In other words, they were on the case.

It was fair to suggest that, in this situation, there must have been something more going on than just the soothing promises, persuasive powers and hocus pocus of the genius engineer who came up with this. And there was. It was the tipping of the earth as it spun around the sun.

In the summertime, the sunrise was around 5:30 in the morning, and the men putting the cones out could do so in daylight. As autumn proceeded, however, the sun rose later and later. And so to put the cones out at 5:30 a.m. would be in the dark and dangerous. Thus it was decided not to continue the third lane program past the summertime. They could be back in May.

Had anyone thought to simply move the cone program ahead an hour so they bring the people out in the light at 6:30 to get it ready for 7 in the belief that three quarters of a loaf is better than nothing? Apparently not.

Had anyone thought to accept an offer from the Town of Southampton to provide every day in the autumn two police cars with bright lights, that would ride directly behind the people putting in the cones and serve as a "pace car" for the morning commute behind him while keeping the cone workers safe?

Apparently not. The County has its own police cars. And the County Highway Department are the workers. They would protect them. By pulling them off the job on September 15.

Tom Neely, who is the Southampton Town Transportation Commissioner had this to say when he told me about the County's plan to block the accesses.

"It's their road. They can do what they want."

Finally, at 10 a.m. Friday morning, the meeting at Southampton Town Hall took place. There had been a flurry of meetings late into Thursday evening the night before, and still more meetings on Friday morning.

And so, when 10 a.m. came, and the barbarians were at the gates of the town meeting room, the assembled officials had only one thing to say.

"The cones will be back on Wednesday, October 4 or at the latest, by the weekend."

That would be just a few days from that morning. And it pretty much silenced everybody who attended, except for the politicians who made speeches all patting each other on the back. The cones will be in place through Thanksgiving, and after that and through the winter, there probably won't be any need of them.

Nobody is talking about how all this got worked out but what we do know is that there will be the usual County police and County workers involved, since it is a County Road, and there would be no need of the Town Police or Highway Department workers coming in vigilante fashion and taking over the road, as had been rumored.

And that leaves only one question. Before the cones went up in June, people along the narrow roads of the short cuts complained that the morning commute cars and trucks were causing excessively busy traffic flow on their streets.

Now, with the cones back, and the commuter traffic zipping along problem free, there is no need for any commuters to be using the short cuts. So the question is will the County spend another half a million dollars to remove all the barriers they just put up, or will they just leave them the way they are, which just inconveniences everybody living along these back roads who now have no reason to want any barriers up?