Letters

My letter will be a week late but, hopefully, in time to halt the outcome hailed in the October 2 paper [“Suffolk County Will Again Restrict Lanes, Re-Program Traffic Lights on CR39 in Pared-Down Version of Traffic Flow Experiment,” 27east.com, October 1]. It’s noted in the article that the Suffolk County Department of Public Works was not really in favor of Southampton Town’s latest plan but seems to have thrown its hands up.

It’s a shame. The “no signals” pilot from this past April could be called a success only for drivers from Sandy Hollow onward to the west. Everyone else suffered.

Left out of the “analysis” was the fact that unnecessarily narrowing County Road 39 to one lane at Sandy Hollow resulted in westbound traffic being jammed up all the way back to Water Mill. So the 20 to 30 minutes people used to spend to make it from North Sea to and through Tuckahoe Road was now spent crawling from Water Mill to North Sea. That is “success”?

Further, to claim, as the town does, that the cycle at the Tuckahoe Road light needs no adjustment is hard to believe. Just take a look at Google Maps every weekday at 5 p.m., even now in October, and see the solid red line from Tuckahoe back to North Sea. Every day, without fail. Textbook definition of “choke point.”

Finally, the claim that manpower for the pilot came in at $2,000 over 10 days? I counted 14 men at four different spots along County Road 39 (to quote Superintendent Charles McArdle: “It was intense with staffing …”). Four hours per day. Someone’s calculator is broken.

I submitted a proposal to the town traffic committee and to Mr. McArdle back in April. (Without courtesy of a reply.) The proposal: Simply lengthen the cycle of the east-west green lights at Magee and Tuckahoe roads by four times the normal cycle, from 3:30 to 7 p.m. each weekday. That’s it.

No lane restrictions. No shutdown of north-south passage on Tuckahoe. No extra men. No police assistance required. And billions saved by stopping talk of a “bypass highway.”

As Southampton Village Trustee Len Zinnanti was quoted, “You do nothing, or you try and maybe fail.” Come on, Southampton government — give my no-cost proposal a try.

Kevin Horne

Bridgehampton