Traffic Experiment Shows Improvements in Second Day of Trial

The first two days of Southampton Town’s experiment with bypassing traffic signals on County Road 39 west of Southampton Village during the afternoon rush hour presented a stark contrast in impacts on how traffic flowed westward.

Southampton Town Highway Superintendent Charles McArdle assessed Monday’s first run thusly: “If 10 was perfect, I’d give it a 2.”

The new traffic patterns caused near gridlock congestion in Southampton Village, long backups between Noyac Road and Sandy Hollow Road, and only improved the flow of traffic on County Road 39 west of Southampton west of Sandy Hollow Intersection.

But on Tuesday, after making adjustments to how personnel were stationed to direct traffic at conflict points, and dropping restrictions on the use of some residential back roads in North Sea, McArdle said the program, which he conceived, worked almost exactly as hoped.

“We moved up to a strong 8 today,” McArdle said of Tuesday’s flow after the program ended at 7 p.m. with open traffic lanes on County Road 39.

“If you got to North Sea Road yesterday, it was seven minutes from there to get to [Sunrise Highway],” he said Wednesday morning. “We think it worked like we expected it to. People were thanking us as they went by.”

The experiment, which will run for two weeks on weekday afternoons from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., is focused on improving the flow of traffic on CR39 by turning off the three stop lights west of North Sea Road – and Sandy Hollow Road, Magee Street and Tuckahoe Lane. In order to facilitate this, areas of double lanes on CR39 and Sandy Hollow Road were narrowed to one lane, allowing the two roads to merge without the traffic signal. The double lane on CR39 east of North Sea Road was also eliminated to keep westbound cars in a single lane moving west without needing to merge. Left turns onto CR39 from all side streets is prohibited.

McArdle said that Monday’s sticking points were caused by a combination of issues that slowed the flow of traffic west and compiled to cause clogged arteries leading to or around around the CR39 corridor.

A water main break on Monday afternoon, right in the area of the most complicated merge by the Burger King on CR39, prevented the lefthand “express lane” from ever getting up to speed allowing the merge to clear smoothly.

And some irritated drivers who had come north on Magee Street, expecting to be able to turn left onto CR39 only to find themselves directed by police into a right turn back to the east, made illegal U-turns in the CR39 roadway to get into the westbound flow, which would cause a domino effect of slowed traffic to the east.

To the north of CR39 on North Sea Road, between Noyac Road and Sandy Hollow Road, McArdle said drivers were irritated by the number of cars but that the roadway actually moved at a steady pace that if drivers stuck to it would get them to Sunrise Highway faster than darting down residential backroads – which were blocked off on Monday but left unrestricted on Tuesday, because highway crews ran into too many conflicts with people claiming to live in the neighborhoods.

“We’re not happy that people are still taking Millstone Brook just because that is what they’ve always done, but we think they will realize eventually that staying on North Sea Road and getting to CR39 is going to be quicker than all that zig zagging,” McArdle said Wednesday.

At 5 p.m. on Tuesday, a circuit of the main thoroughfares revealed traffic moving quickly the entire way between the intersection of Noyac Road and North Sea Road to Sandy Hollow and through the merge onto County Road 39 — a key cog of the entire program, which required County Road 39 and Sandy Hollow to be narrowed to a single lane but allowed cars to avoid having to stop at the intersection to allow traffic from the two roads to merge together.

Turning from Southampton Village onto County Road 39 was also free-flowing after a brief pause where traffic merged into a single lane by the Burger King. The roadway flowed steadily all the way through Tuckahoe.

Hill Street had very slow traffic west of downtown Southampton, despite the fact that the stop lights at St. Andrews Road and Tuckahoe Road were not cycling through red, but the downtown did not see the congestion of Monday’s delays.

East of Southampton Village, however, the traffic on Montauk Highway remained exceedingly slow — more than usual, some commuters have assessed.

“Anyone east of North Sea Road was stuck in traffic for an hour or more,” one commuter commented on a 27east post on Instagram. “Yesterday’s traffic was insane. We were driving west from Bridgehampton on Montauk Highway and the traffic was unbelievable.”

The commenter suggested that turning off the red light cycle at the intersection of David Whites Lane in Southampton might help matters.

McArdle said he is not sure how the traffic lights experiment could have caused greater delays to the east of North Sea Road, since that intersection is continuing to cycle through its red-green lights as it always has.

Eliminating the double lane at the intersection, however, allows about 17 fewer cars to pass through the intersection with each green light, the highway superintendent estimated. Whether that number of cars could cause noticeably worse congestion to the east was a question McArdle said he was skeptical about: He noted that Montauk Highway to the east of Water Mill is always a bumper-to-bumper crawl after 3 p.m. on weekdays, even before the lights program started on Tuesday.

“If you think 17 cars each light is causing more of a backup in Bridgehampton, I don’t know, I don’t think that’s us,” he said.

He surmised that any additional backups east of Southampton on Monday and Tuesday may have just been a surge in volume of traffic after the long holiday weekend, or simply a matter of perception by drivers frustrated over slow progress.

Southampton Town has approved $60,000 for the manpower needed to run the test for two weeks and is asking commuters and residents of the Southampton area to fill out a survey — attached to the QR code with this story — about how they think the program worked so the town and Suffolk County can assess whether it was worth the effort and expense.

Two Southampton residents working along CR39 on Tuesday afternoon, wondered why the town would spend so much of local taxpayers money to try to make the afternoon commute easier for people who don’t live in the town.

“Why are we spending all this money to help people that don’t live here,” the man, who declined to give his name, grumbled. “We live here, we know when to stay away from this road, why do we care if these people have to sit in traffic. But we have to pay for it?”

On Wednesday morning, McArdle said that his crews would be making some more minor adjustments to how they handle the traffic pattern changes — widening the coned-off travel lanes slightly so drivers feel more conformable proceeding at an appropriate speed — and seeing if the traffic continues to flow better.

Before the program started, he’d said he would expect things to go smoother with each day as drivers grow accustomed to the new arrangements and learn which ways are the quickest for them.

“Today is only day three,” he said on Wednesday morning. “If it is anything like yesterday, I think we’ve shown this can work.”