Greenport Village won’t be included in DOT paving project
Despite requests from Village officials, Main Street in Greenport will not be included in the state Department of Transportation’s $6.9 million repaving project. However, plans are in place to have the damaged stretch of Main Street repaved before the winter, Mayor David Nyce said.
In a joint meeting Friday, Village officials met with representatives from Southold Town and the DOT to discuss short and long-term options for repairing the .75-mile portion of Main Street between Front Street and Knapp Place. The project currently underway is a 14-mile stretch of road from Tuckers Lane in Southold to the end of Main Road in Orient Point.
While a deal couldn’t be reached to include the section of Greenport Village, Mr. Nyce called the meeting “very productive.” He said the village, Southold Town and the DOT are looking into joint grants for federal funding to repave the village-maintained road.
Applying for joint grants is one long-term solution, he said. The village is also considering surrendering control of the road, and its included maintenance, back to the state, Mr. Nyce said.
“The Village has a minimum budget it gets from the state to repair its roads,” Mr. Nyce told the Suffolk Times after the meeting. “It is never going to be satisfactory to maintain the roads.”
Until a long-term plan is finalized, Mr. Nyce said the Village is working on a short-term fix to repair the road. The village is in the process of getting an estimate to perform patch repairs before winter weather further damages the asphalt.
“If we go through another winter like last winter there will be nothing left of the road,” he said. “It will just be potholes.”
Trustee George Hubbard also called the meeting Friday “productive.”
“The type of work DOT is doing now isn’t going to help because our road is so bad,” he said. “They are laying less than a half inch of blacktop. Our section of Main Street is already down to the cement in lot of places and that needs a different type of work. We need to put down an inch and a half of blacktop.”
The DOT is also conducting a similar project repaving Main Road from Tuckers Lane in Southold west to Doctors Path in Riverhead, a 15-mile stretch at a cost of $8.1 million.
As a part of the project the DOT will be remarking bike lanes and visible pedestrian crosswalks, and for added safety, a rumble strip will be incorporated on the centerline to warn motorists who stray across into oncoming traffic, according to a release from the agency.
