Lost Highway

So, was 1975 the turning point? Did the South Fork really walk away from a potential solution to the traffic that’s choking the profitable summer season, taking an economic toll on businesses, charities and family budgets by enmeshing residents and visitors alike in the mind-melting drudgery of a bumper-to-bumper quagmire?

It’s long been a narrative that exists, and Bill Hillman, Suffolk County’s chief engineer — arguably the most knowledgeable person to have an opinion on the region’s traffic — repeated it in a conversation with members of a Southampton Town task force that has taken up the conversation about the traffic dilemma.

In a nutshell, the point is this: There was a solution on the table in 1975, as the state and county had a $160 million plan to extend Sunrise Highway to bypass the villages and get the traffic farther east, beyond Bridgehampton. But local residents made enough of a fuss to derail the idea, worried that “if you build it, they will come.” In this alternate reality, the limited-access highway keeps the east-west traffic sheparded, and the smaller roads would be clearer.

One thing complicates this notion: induced demand. It’s a term used in economics, but it’s also applied by traffic engineers. It’s analogous to the notion that killed the highway: Easier access means more people, so let’s not build a better road. As it turned out, the region’s appeal was strong enough that the mere difficulty of getting here hasn’t killed it (yet).

But in this instance, induced demand means something a little different. It’s acknowledged by traffic engineers that adding lanes is only a temporary solution for congestion. Study after study has shown that whatever benefit an additional lane provides is almost immediately (or at least within a decade or so) swallowed up by an uncannily equal increase in use. So that extra lane helps for a couple of years — and then it’s swallowed up by more traffic.

In fact, this was demonstrated, clearly, with additional lanes on County Road 39 — which always led to a short reprieve, and in a few years no reprieve at all. Despite those extra lanes, the east-west commute is still a mess. So this alternative reality with a Sunrise Highway extending miles further? The folks living in that universe are complaining about traffic, just the same as we are. And they do it while staring out at a paved stretch that destroyed farmland and woodlands directly over the sole-source aquifer, which were preserved and protected in this reality but are dotted with even more houses in the other.

In truth, volume is the issue: The east-west traffic is a major element, simply because of the geography of the South Fork, but it’s the sheer number of cars and trucks on the road, every road, at any given time that’s the issue — and no mystical unbuilt highway would have solved that.

Is there a solution? If so, it probably involves a complete transformation of the region into a series of population centers with adequate public transportation options, central parking lots — and villages and hamlets where cars are banned. You can get here by car but you have to get around some other way: on foot, by bike, on shuttles. Think Disney World.

Not likely. It’s more of a thought experiment. But, honestly, there’s more of a real world strategy lurking in there than in the conversation about the “road never built” that would have solved all the problems. Mickey Mouse is made up, and so is that.