Dan's Papers - January 18, 2008 - It's Four Lanes, Not Three And It's A Surprise

Well, the construction has continued on County Road 39 and they've opened a part of it and guess what - it's FOUR LANES, two lanes westbound and two lanes eastbound. Somebody told me about this and I went up there to see it. It's true.

Now, we've been right on top of this story for years. County Road 39, the only way in and out of the Hamptons, has for years and years been two lanes - one lane eastbound and one lane westbound. Beginning five years ago, the traffic jams on this road became intolerable. And two years ago, as a result of some brilliant thinking by our County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, they began what they called the "Cone Program." Every weekday morning at 6 am, the police and highway workers went out on the road and, by placing orange traffic cones out, created a third lane, an eastbound lane, so that all morning long the line of cars traveling into the Hamptons could get to work on time. Then, at 10 a.m., the cones were picked up. And we'd go back to one lane each way.

The cone program worked. It was high-maintenance, with all the police and highway employees out there every morning. And so finally, this fall, construction began to make that third lane a permanent eastbound lane. The work would be completed by May 2008.

Well what do you know? They've opened part of it now and it's two lanes eastbound and two lanes westbound. It's four lanes, not three.

And forgetting for a minute how they did that, it just seems so correct that it be four lanes and not three. As a matter of fact, ever since they started the cone system, I had wondered - how do they do that? If you have two lanes eastbound into the Hamptons and only one lane going westbound every morning - and then you don't do two lanes westbound in the evening, how come the cars don't, over time, pile up in the Hamptons? I mean, it's just logical, isn't it? But with the cone system, they didn't. I just figured these past two years it was some sort of magic trick.

Well you know what? All this time, when we've been writing about and talking about building this second eastbound lane, what we have conveniently forgotten is that in between the east and westbound lanes for all these years is the turning lane. A third lane, separating the other two.

So there you are. It never was a two-lane road. It was a three-lane road. And now, the third lane is going to lose its turning lane status, and the new lane they are building will be the fourth lane.

So it's two in and two out. Oh, such are the mysteries of life. Except it asks a new question entirely. How does an eastbound driver make a left turn into the parking lot on the north side of the street like they used to? Huh? Answer me that. What's really going on here, anyway?