Five corners intersection to get redesign

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A redesign is in the works for the problematic intersection at Toilsome Lane and Route 114 in East Hampton. MICHAEL WRIGHT

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The “Five Corners” intersection of Route 114, Toilsome Lane and Buells Lane Extension, long a thorn in the side of East Hampton village officials and motorists for its awkward traffic flow, will undergo another redesign, village administrator Larry Cantwell said Monday.

The New York Department of Transportation, which controls Route 114 and whose engineers will redesign the intersection, recently received a survey of the area and plans to expand the roadway at the tricky intersection to the north where drivers have resorted to driving on the grass to make their right turns, according to Frank Pearson, regional traffic engineer for the state DOT.

The last improvements made to the intersection were about two years ago when the DOT painted demarcations on the lanes so people would have a better idea which way to proceed, he said.

“We hope to be able to provide more pavement space so people will be able to make their turns more efficiently,” Mr. Pearson said, noting that the construction involved in redesigning the intersection will be mostly to the north and is not expected to be major.

It’s too early to discuss the specifics of the redesign or when it might be completed, Mr. Cantwell said, but the village’s acquisition six months ago of an acre and a half of land on the north side of the intersection will give the engineers extra room for creating a more workable intersection, he asserted.

He said the purchase was not intended to provide room for a “roundabout,” a small traffic circle like the one the state completed in May 2001 about eight miles north on Route 114 in the village of North Haven. It has been called a success for smoothing the traffic flow and reducing the accident rate at a complex intersection.

But The Village Board has been resistant to the state’s suggestion that a roundabout might be a good idea at the Toilsome Lane intersection, Mr. Cantwell said. A roundabout that Southampton Town built on Scuttle Hole Road north of Bridgehampton, he noted, has not been popular with drivers. It was designed, in part, to force them to slow down at what had been a problematic intersection.

Ninety percent of the land will be left open, he said, but a small piece of it will be available to state engineers when they begin the process of redesign. The land was purchased by the village for $1.1 million. Prior to that, the land was horse pasture.

“The intersection has been changed by the DOT a couple of times in the last five or six years, but the results have been unsatisfactory,” Mr. Cantwell said. “It’s still a dangerous intersection, the traffic movements are awkward and turning radiuses are difficult.” He said the village made the land acquisition only to give the engineers more room for their redesign. Whether or not there will ever be plans for a roundabout, he did not know, he said.

When the intersection was changed the first time in recent memory, islands were introduced into the intersection and a split lane on Toilsome Lane was added. Mr. Cantwell and Mr. Pearson discussed the issue of the redesign at a Village Board meeting last week.

The reason the intersection is still problematic is that the engineers had such a small piece of land to work with, Mr. Cantwell said. “Given the complexity of the intersection and the land they had to work with, it was a challenge for them to come up with a design. We’re hoping the extra land will give them the flexibility to do a better design than what’s there today.”

The way the intersection is now, Mr. Pearson noted, drivers headed west on Toilsome Lane have a single lane that splits as a driver approaches. “One lane enables you to make a left and the other lane enables you to go right. The problem is that if there are a few vehicles that are waiting to turn left, they fill up the intersection and are in the way of people who want to turn right.

“The change will allow us to further separate the left-turners from the right-turners,” he said. He has inspected the intersection personally, both at the site and in an aerial view, and acknowledged that the intersection as it is now is “odd.”