To the Editor:
As someone who lives on a north-south road that connects Sound Avenue and Main Road, I can say that whenever there is an accident or issue on either road and traffic is routed north or south to the other east-west artery, there is always a traffic jam where rerouted vehicles must turn against traffic onto the other east-west road. Traffic gets blocked and it has taken extremely long times for people to get where they need to go. There is no assistance by law enforcement to help cars/trucks making those turns at the opposite end of the issue on either road. This happens on almost every north-south route out here.
Recently, I headed south on West Lane at around 8:20 a.m. and noticed a higher than usual flow of traffic heading south on West Lane from Sound Avenue. And it took way longer than usual to make my right hand turn toward Riverhead. But it was only about a 10-minute wait. When I returned about around 9:18, the line of cars extended to Stakey’s Nursery. What was worse is that there were kids at their bus stop. School starts at 9 and their bus was nowhere in sight and they had to have been waiting for well over 30 minutes — possibly more — standing there in the heat.
I called Riverhead Police non-emergency number to see if maybe they could assist at Main Road and West Lane, to get these cars moving, and I felt like I was blown off. I was told there was an accident on West Lane and Sound Avenue (obviously) and it was almost cleared and no one was available to help out.
Not the answer I was hoping for. I was hoping for “we will send a car over to get traffic moving” and get these kids and their parents out of the heat and to school safely.”
I think the policy should be that, whenever there is an accident or other road closure on either Sound Avenue or Main Road, and traffic is rerouted, the police department will have units at the other end of the north-south road onto which traffic is diverted, so that traffic may continue to move safely.
Joyce Brown
Aquebogue
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