Dan's Papers - February 22, 2008 - The Hampton Subway Newsletter

Delays: Perhaps the biggest delay in the history of the Hampton Subway took place on Friday and Saturday when for 38 hours a piping plover, which is an endangered species of bird, was seen to be standing on the starboard rail of the subway tracks 300 yards to the east of the Amagansett station. The entire system shut down when it was first reported. The hope was that he would leave quickly - it is illegal to pick up a piping plover and just move him away, he could die - but he just stayed and stayed. His presence on the track inconvenienced more than 6,000 riders over the two days. It also caused the postponement of the opening of the "de Luxe" service of Hampton Subway, which is the well appointed and gorgeous first class subway car that will lead each subway as it goes on its way. Finally, at 3:48 pm on Saturday, he flew away.
Late Saturday night, at 3 a.m., when the subway shuts down for maintenance for one hour, it was determined that the mate of this piping plover was alongside that starboard rail where nobody could see it, dead. Poor thing.

The word about the temporary closing down of the subway and particularly the launch of "De Luxe" service spread rapidly. It did not, however, reach the United Nations.
On Saturday at 10 am, Secretary General Kofi Anan showed up with a newspaper under his arm and some Euros in his hand to ride the "De Luxe" car (the "De Luxe" service will only take Euros for ticket purchases), and was initially quite upset to find out the launch of the service had been postponed and there were no photographers around to take his picture. Finally, his bodyguards quieted him down and he left in his limo. See you next Friday afternoon, Kofi. We re-launch again at 4 p.m.

The three-mile underground spur of the Hampton Subway System, put into service between the Shinnecock station and the Lobster Inn station, opened to the public just three months ago and then quickly closed, cannot be repaired, according to engineers from the Department of Transportation.
"We did a complete evaluation of this," said Engineer Bart Collins of the DOT. "It would be cheaper to build a whole new spur than to repair this one."
The spur went into service last October as a welcome addition to the emergency transportation effort made necessary by the narrowing of County Road 39 while it was being widened, a construction project that is expected to be completed by this Memorial Day. The Hampton Jitney put extra busses into service. The Railroad put extra trains into service. And the Hampton Subway built a new station at the Lobster Inn, the very entrance of County Road 39, and then hooked it up to its full complement of tracks by building the underground tunnel between the Shinnecock Station and the Lobster Inn. It was not built very well. Biff Aspinall, the brother of Commissioner Bill Aspinall, won the contract to build it, and began digging at both ends and worked toward the middle. It didn't quite meet up. When the service opened, it was built with a 30-foot incline going southbound and a 30-foot decline going northbound at the middle. It came to the attention of the DOT, which closed it, pending an investigation.

As a result of the postponement of the "De Luxe" service of Hampton Subway, I decided to take a much needed one-week vacation, and so I am writing you from the Atlantis Casino and Resort in the Bahamas, where I have gone with my brother Biff and our wives to get in some fishing and gambling.
The Atlantis Casino and Resort is a fitting place for us to go, as much of it is underground and underwater - this is Atlantis after all - and it gives us a chance to think about what could be done with the spur between Shinnecock and Lobster Inn that we can no longer use.
With the imminent opening of the extra lanes on County Road 39, we feel that building a whole new spur between these two stations might just be unnecessary. Why spend another $22 million when you don't have to?
Instead, we are toying with the idea of making use of this tunnel for some other purpose. We are considering a lot of things. A nature walk. A bypass road from the Sunrise to Hill Street. Maybe it could be a sort of fun project for the public - a water flume like they have at Splish Splash in Riverhead, for example. We hope to have this figured out soon.
On another matter, I am happy to report that the nine-week-old strike by the Hampton Subway flagmen is at an end. Although they didn't get any raise in pay - we've just had to absorb this $22 million disaster for heaven's sakes - they can consider it a victory. In the settlement we have agreed that they can keep their jobs. And so the scabs we have hired to go down the tracks and wave the red and green flags at the approaching trains will be let go at the moment the regular workers appear. It's been a tough week for the Hampton Subway. We have determined that the three grand chandeliers that grace the ceiling of the "De Luxe" cars were all put in with too long a chain. They are only five feet ten inches from the floor and everyone who has been in these cars, even short people, duck low when the subway makes the chandeliers sway back and forth.
We hope to have them fixed in time for the inauguration of the new service, but they sure inconvenienced the people at the launch party. The rest you know.

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