Planners: Make Peconic Avenue one-way northbound

Peconic Avenue will become a one-way street for northbound-only traffic if the recommendations of traffic engineers are implemented by officials.

The change is intended to improve both traffic flow and pedestrian safety at the often-bottlenecked busy intersection of Main Street and Peconic/Roanoke Avenues.

Downtown traffic headed for the South Fork would be redirected via Court Street to the Nugent Drive bridge.

Representatives of the planning firm of Nelson Pope and Voorhis, which was hired by the town to develop a transportation analysis for the state-funded downtown revitalization study currently underway, presented their findings and recommendations to the town board at yesterday’s work session.

The consultants completed field inventories and traffic counts throughout the town to develop base conditions, project future traffic volume and identify “hot spots” downtown that require improvement.

The Peconic/Roanoke/Main Street intersection was identified as the least functional intersection in the downtown district, rating “F” grades for five of the 11 potential directions of travel through the intersection.

In addition to making Peconic Avenue one-way northbound, the lanes at the intersection should be restriped to provide two westbound through lanes from Roanoke to Griffing Avenue. This can be accomplished by reducing the width of existing extra-wide parking spaces on that stretch of West Main Street, engineer Osman Barrie of Nelson Pope and Voorhis said.

The Court Street/Nugent Drive/West Main Street intersection has problems of its own, due to misalignment of Court Street and Nugent Drive, Barrie noted. The firm recommends reducing the size of the triangular traffic island at the intersection to provide wider southbound lanes on the north side of the Nugent Drive bridge and creating two southbound lanes on Court Street. A westbound left-turn phased signal on Main Street (for traffic turning left onto Nugent Drive from Main Street) should also be installed, they said.

Suffolk County, meanwhile, plans alterations to the Riverside traffic circle, which will be widened to two lanes, county department of public works engineer Bill Hillman, who also attended yesterday’s work session, said.

Supervisor Sean Walter said the recommendations make sense to him.

Councilwoman Jodi Giglio expressed concern about access to the three properties on the south side of West Main Street just west of Peconic Avenue, which she said currently rely exclusively on Peconic Avenue for access. One of those sites is the subject of an application to build a 48-unit apartment building. Giglio said the town should ask the state to allow access from West Main Street if Peconic Avenue is made one-way.

“Otherwise, people will have to go all the way around to come up Peconic to get to their building,” she said.

A new route to the south side is something that also concerns the Riverhead Fire Department, because the Riverhead Fire District takes in all of Riverside and parts of Northampton. Fire trucks heading from the department’s Roanoke Avenue headquarters to an alarm on the south side of the river currently proceed south on Roanoke Avenue and use Peconic Avenue, Riverhead’s First Assistant Chief Kevin Brooks said. [Editor’s note: See follow-up story: Southbound emergency vehicles won’t be blocked from Peconic Avenue.]

If Peconic Avenue is made one-way northbound, fire trucks would have to head west on Railroad Avenue and then south on either Griffing or Osborn in order to access Court Street, Brooks said. Both of those lefts and rights are tight, Brooks said.

“They’re certainly not conducive to a ladder truck turning,” he said.

“I guess it makes sense on a normal day for a normal person,” Brooks said. “But when you’re talking about emergency vehicles, we’re going to have a problem. Obviously, it’s going to slow us down a bit and add to our response time. Fire multiplies eight times a minute, so minutes count,” he said.

Fire Commissioner Ed Carey, chairman of the Riverhead Fire District board of commissioners, said fire district officials were unaware of the traffic study and the possible changes.

“I would hope someone does ask the fire district and the chiefs for their input,” Carey said. “This is the first we’re hearing about it.”

The traffic study, part of an in-depth downtown revitalization study that includes an economic and market-trends analysis, is funded by a $567,000 Brownfield Opportunity Areas Program grant from N.Y. state. Riverhead was one of 21 communities statewide selected in April 2011 for a state-funded study, part of a $6.5 million initiative, officially known as the “Brownfields Opportunities Area Step II Nomination” study. The grant is administered by the N.Y. Department of State in partnership with the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Last October, the town awarded the planning contract to Nelson Pope and Voorhis, which is working with Sustainable Long Island on the project.

Town officials agreed yesterday to meet with the state DOT to ask the state not to widen the sidewalk between Roanoke and Griffing avenues, as the state currently plans. The state DOT is undertaking a sidewalk improvement project on Route 25; contracts are scheduled to be signed this fall and work is scheduled to get underway in the spring, state DOT officials told the town board earlier this year.

The sidewalk on the north side of the street between Roanoke and Griffing must remain the same width and the parking spots made narrower in order to gain the extra westbound lane of travel, Voohris said yesterday.

“You need to have that discussion with DOT very quickly,” he said.

The planning consultants will continue to refine the traffic flow plan and prepare the economic and market trends analysis, Voorhis said. They are also compiling and analyzing the results of a community survey that’s been undertaken to determine why people come to downtown Riverhead and what they do there.

The survey had more than 700 responses as of yesterday, said planner Kathryn Eiseman.

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