County Road 39 Blinking Light Program a No Go

Any morning commuter driving east along County Road 39 in Southampton is well and frustratingly aware of the snail’s pace movement along the lines of idle forward, stop, idle forward, repeat — all the way from the beginning of County Road 39 to Bridgehampton.

For now, there’s no end in sight, despite an ambitious concept conceived by Southampton Town Highway Superintendent Charles McArdle last year.

Last fall, town officials, looking to ameliorate the slow, blood pressure-raising congestion conducted a pilot program blinking the traffic signals yellow at five intersections from Southampton to Water Mill. They’d flash yellow continuously rather than cycling though green, yellow and red lights, allowing commuters to keep moving.

Discussing the program at a September 29, 2022, Town Board work session, Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman underscored the board’s desire to gather data before, during and after the program to see if it would really shave a substantial amount of time off a driver’s commute.

It doesn’t, according to Town Engineer Thomas Houghton.

While he has not finished a final report on the data collection effort, he said that anecdotally and from a cursory review of the data, blinking the lights didn’t make enough of a difference to warrant undertaking the effort on a permanent basis.

The pilot program, which ran from October 24 to 28, received mixed reviews from community members who weighed in, in response to a social media request posted by The Express News Group. After its conclusion, Schneiderman said he hadn’t gotten a lot of complaints nor compliments about the program.

By contrast, another traffic calming measure in place in Hampton Bays has been embraced and will continue: The traffic signal at the intersection of Canoe Place Road and Montauk Highway has been set to blink yellow, and the intersection redefined with cones to funnel traffic and restrict left turns.

That program began two summers ago. A brief stall last year while county officials performed road improvements elicited an array of angry phone calls to officials and the program was swiftly reinstated.

While McArdle said his staff was available to man the intersections on County Road 39, they couldn’t. Only police officers have the authority to change the lights. The county, which owns the road, would only agree to the blinking lights program if assured there would be police at each intersection. Southampton Town Police Chief James Kiernan said he didn’t have the manpower to deploy officers to each intersection.

Beyond the lack of manpower and the possible lack of success with the program on County Road 39 is another obstacle: cost. Officials said the five-day pilot program alone cost between $60,000 and $80,000. To run it for the entire summer season would put a massive dent in the town budget.

“People send me emails all day long: ‘When are you coming back, when are you coming back?’ It’s out of my hands,” McArdle said this week. His department wants to do it. He had an afternoon plan, too, he said, but town officials “definitely don’t want to do it.”

He suspects officials don’t want to say the pilot worked because “then they’ll get stuck paying for it.”