By Marissa Maier

After years of debate and wait, Southampton Town will begin a traffic calming project on Noyac Road sometime after Labor Day. According to the town’s superintendent of highways Alex Gregor, the project will focus on a particularly treacherous stretch of the roadway near Cromer’s Market. Last year alone, there were two fatalities in this area. Gregor added in other instances a driver ran into a building, while another driver hit a tree.

“We will straighten out the bad turn before Cromer’s. To make the road wider, we will have to acquire some property to the south of Cromer’s,” explained Gregor.

He added that the plan, which is only in the conceptual stages at the moment, includes repainting the road markings and installing a few islands to encourage slower driving. Tom Neely, the town’s executive director of transportation, said the plan has been through nearly eight revisions since it was first proposed in 2004 by the department of land management. It wasn’t until December 2009 that the project was moved over to the highway department.

“Right now there is just a conceptual plan. All the surveying is complete,” added Gregor. “We are moving forward.”

The traffic calming project will cost roughly $430,000, a figure based on an engineer’s initial estimate, and will be funded through the highway department. Gregor is also overseeing a $420,000 project to realign Red Creek Road.

“These are capital projects but they are taking the money out of my road reconstruction budget,” remarked Gregor, who worries he needs additional funds to repave all of the severely damaged roads in Southampton Town.

At a board meeting on Tuesday, February 23, Gregor requested an extra $2 million to add onto his $3.8 million budget for the year for roadwork. Although supervisor Anna Throne-Holst and councilwoman Nancy Graboski seemed open to increasing the money for paving, councilmen Chris Nuzzi and Jim Malone denied the request.

“I was trying to get more money to make up for these projects [Cromer's Market and Red Creek Road]. I have a million dollars worth of projects that are coming out of my budget,” stated Gregor. “Please give me the funding to do the road paving well. If we wait the roads could deteriorate more. It doesn’t take a scientist to see we need to fix the roads.”

Due to a particularly rainy, snowy and cold winter, the roads throughout Southampton are riddled with potholes and cracks. Heavy traffic adds to the wear and tear, pointed out Gregor. His office fields several calls every day from drivers complaining about the conditions of the roads. One woman, said Gregor, called him at home on a Sunday. She explained she had several flat tires in the past few months and her car rims were ruined. The women blamed the damage on the potholes on Montauk Highway.

Gregor pointed out that fixing potholes are only a short term solution and said the roads need to be completely repaved. With his already budgeted $3.8 million, Gregor plans to repave 24 miles of roadway. An additional $2 million would allow him to repave another 10 miles. He added that the town would bond for the money, or take out a loan, which requires a 60 day waiting period until the funds are allocated.

Councilman Nuzzi argued that Gregor couldn’t provide a specific list of the other roads he seeks to repave. He said the board will distribute more money when the funding is required.

“He is looking to repave an additional number of road beyond what we pave each year,” remarked Nuzzi.

Allocating extra money will also mean raising taxes, noted Nuzzi.

Gregor said he will be back before the board sometime after the special election on March 9 to ask for the additional money.

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