GROWLS FROM THE FOLKS ON THE MANORVILLE BYPASS

by Jerry Cimisi

What does the middle class neighborhood of Manorville, just east of the Hamptons, have in common with the nouveau riche of Dune Road? It’s County Road 111, which runs from the Long Island Expressway to Sunrise Highway and is the preferred route for Hamptonites going to or from the South Fork. Whether they are “trade parade” workers who toil in the East End utopia or wealthy travelers from Manhattan, it’s understandable that the residents of Manorville have reached the point at which they are calling public meetings. On January 10, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy reviewed residents’ concerns over the congestion, the rise in accidents (including one death) and the fact that monies allotted for a traffic study had, for some reason or other, not effected a study, now promised for the near future. Bennetta Katherine Dosiak, a longtime resident, said to this paper, “We’re basically held hostage, especially at certain times of the week and year.”

And indeed they are. Ms. Dosiak lives right on 111, next to her florist shop. She adds, “If you’re coming back here on the expressway from Riverhead, and get off Exit 70, you have to wait forever to cross the bridge that goes over the expressway. There’s no light; you have to yield to them. And when I say ‘forever,’ it’s practically that long.”

She also cites the congestion at the Mobil station, which is the first thing on 111 that eastbound drivers hit when they come off Exit 70. “If you want to get on Bauer, which is just after the Mobil station, you’ve got a problem.”

Eva Haughie, an artist who grew up in Manorville, living on 111, recalls: “We’d sit on the lawn, looking for four leaf clovers. There weren’t many cars. That was before 111 was a four-lane highway.”

Her mother, Grace Amond, opened a hot dog stand, Eva worked there in the summer. With the widened highway and the years, the traffic grew. The hotdog stand became Grace’s Hots in 1987. On the cusp of the last decade of the 20th century, the attractiveness of the Hamptons and the population all over had grown to the extent that now, 20 years later, there is a problem that has everyone looking at the numbers and wondering at a solution.

As for the numbers: As Ms. Haughie points out, “When I was a kid, Manorville had 5,000 people. Not so long ago it had about 8,000-9,000. Now it’s between 17,000-18,000. Southampton was 20,000 people; now it’s 60,000.”

Even as the Hamptons has proven to be an increasing draw for the rich and near rich, once wholly rural Manorville is proving to be an increasingly attractive place to build and live. With its proximity to the expressway and its speedy access to both the North and South Fork. “They talk about us being the Dix Hills of the east,” said Haughie.

All of the above are obvious, but what is the solution? If the residents bemoan the traffic study that for some reason has been delayed, Manorville resident Thomas Muller, says he has the solution at least in Manorville: the creation of a two mile road,

“The Manorville-Hampton Expressway.” Muller, who has lived in Manorville since 1970 and is an engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory, has conceived what he believes is (and presents a convincing argument for) a two-mile bypass that would alleviate the congestion by Exit 70. Muller’s Manorville-Hampton Expressway would be “Exit 70A,” placed eastward of Exit 70 and would cut almost directly south to join County Road 111 at a point where, as he said, “111 is like an expressway, with woods on either side and no residences.”

The Manorville-Hampton Expressway would require overpasses and merge lanes at the expressway and 111 would cut through the Pine Barrens. There may be the rub.
Muller has been the civic representative on the Brookhaven Town Pine Barrens Commission Advisory Committee for eight years. He argues that on this point the concerns of those who have attacked his proposal on environmental grounds are misplaced. In the proposal he has made, Muller states his two-mile expressway “will not violate the purpose of the Pine Barrens core legislation nor the health of the LI water aquifer in the roadway area.”

Muller says his expressway would not only use a minuscule portion of the Pine Barrens and offset the pollution of congested traffic — vehicles idling, exhaust runoff — but is, in fact, allowed by the Pine Barrens Protection Act itself. New York State Environmental Conservation Law, Article 57.

Muller continued, “Even if this proposal is accepted and implemented, it will be two years before it is built, and we’ll suffer two years of accidents and even deaths. If it is not implemented — and I see that it is only real solution to this problem — we will only see this problem — accidents and deaths — increase.”

At a January 10 meeting in Manorville, County Executive Levy told Manorville residents that he favored the immediate installation of a traffic light at the intersection of 111 and the LIE, where, he says, 1,400 traverse per hour. Meanwhile, as Eva Haughie puts it, “Every time we hear the sirens, we think someone we know could have had an accident or worse.”