Suffolk County takes aim at Hamptons’ Achilles’ heel: traffic

Hamptons real estate is among the most expensive in the U.S., but getting to it is a major pain.

Now Suffolk County is launching an effort to alleviate one of the area’s worst bottlenecks, Route 39, Newsday reported.

County officials said Thursday that they would request proposals to ease congestion in the seven-mile stretch of the road from Hampton Bays to Southampton Village.

Time will tell what consulting and engineering firms will propose, but one likely solution is replacing traffic lights with roundabouts — a favorite of traffic planners and economists because they improve vehicle flow, reduce emissions and nearly eliminate fatal crashes at intersections.

Another is adding a third lane to the two-lane byway, although road-widening has fallen out of favor because it induces demand, and the last thing the Hamptons needs is more cars and trucks. The third lane would be used for eastbound traffic in the morning and westbound traffic in the afternoon, to ease congestion caused by the “trade parade.”

The trade parade is in part an affordable housing problem: Because landscapers, restaurant workers and other working-class folks have been priced out of Hamptons real estate, they commute from points west on a road network not designed for that.

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The congestion, which worsens during the summer and can become gridlock on Friday afternoons, is also a headwind for Hamptons real estate markets, because it deters buyers of weekend homes. For locals, it interferes with daily living: Many in Southampton Village struggle to exit their driveways between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., Newsday reported, citing Mayor Bill Manger.

Residents also get more traffic on local streets when motorists divert to them from a clogged Route 39, Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said, according to the publication.

“The success we’ve had here on the East End is now really hurting us,” Manger said.