Hamptons Subway Cuts Ribbon on New Foxwoods Tunnel

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Jerry Seinfeld of East Hampton appeared at the ticket booth down on the Amagansett platform, inquiring about the cost of subway rides. Then he left. Others riding the subway this week included New York Mets owner Steven Cohen and celebrated author Bob Caro.

NO MORE SLOWDOWN AT SHINNECOCK

Subway goers at Shinnecock, who have gotten used to a slowdown from 35 miles an hour to 15 miles an hour because of a misalignment of the tracks one mile west of that station, will no longer have to put up with that. The earthquake that shook Long Island on Friday, April 5, has resulted in the alignment repairing itself.

“This is a great day for Hamptons Subway,” Commissioner Bill Aspinall said.

This misalignment had occurred when construction of a 4-mile spur between Shinnecock and Lobster Inn in 2018 went wrong. Biff Aspinall, the commissioner’s brother, had won the contract to build the spur. But having his men start at both ends to meet at the middle resulted in the eastbound part being 2 feet higher when it met the western part. A ramp fixed it, but it meant there had to be a bump.

Way to go, Biff.

SUGGESTION BOX THIEF ARRESTED

Thanks to effective investigations and gumshoe work, local police have arrested the man who stole the suggestion box from the wall of the Hampton Bays station. He is Harvey Doorbanger of 342 Holiday Lane in East Quogue, the yellow house four doors in from Wagner Boulevard on the left.

Police arrested Doorbanger when he showed up at the Hampton Bays headquarters of Hamptons Subway trying to find out why his weekly letters demanding ransom have not resulted in compliance. He initially resisted arrest, insisting that he was owed an answer to the question of whether or not his letters had been received at HQ, and if not, had he been sending his ransom notes to the wrong address all this time. Doorbanger, if convicted of all charges against him, including trespassing, hostage taking and attempted extortion, could spend 1,324 years in prison.

At Doorbanger’s house, where he lived alone, police found incriminating evidence, including chisels, a hammer, pieces of wooden suggestion boxes (Doorbanger had been sending pieces of the box with ransom demands) and even the rope and bag he used to smuggle the suggestion box off the wall, up the escalators and out to the street when he stole it in February.

Neighbors say that Doorbanger was a quiet man who was well mannered but kept to himself. He pleaded not guilty and hired the firm of Giuliani and Eastman to handle his defense.

TRACK WORK BEGINS

Selected routes of the subway system will be shut down during the next month as maintenance crews replace 10-year-old tracks as per Transit Authority orders. From Monday through Thursday this week, the section between East Hampton and Bridgehampton will be closed from noon to 9 p.m. Riders must get off at either station and take the waiting shuttle buses to the other station. We regret the inconvenience.

GROUND BROKEN FOR NEW SUBWAY TO FOXWOODS

Commissioner Bill Aspinall, together with United States Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, cut the ribbon last Monday to begin construction of the new roundabout subway tunnel that will soon connect our Sag Harbor station to the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.

The event occurred in the dead-end tunnel at Sag Harbor, where attempts to build the subway tunnel directly between those two locations got thwarted by the construction workers striking oil underneath Long Island Sound halfway there, flooding the tunnel.

Now the plan is to build the subway tunnel around the underground oil find by heading west out of Sag Harbor, across Peconic Bay to Mattituck, then under Mattituck and out into Long Island Sound to the west. The tunnel will then proceed along the coast to Port Jefferson, then arc out into the center of the sound and proceed easterly to come ashore near Groton, Connecticut.

There are those who have objected to both the cost and the longer route the subway will have to go, arguing that instead of a half-hour the trip will take a boring three hours, but Hamptons Subway is soldiering on with the project.

Secretary Buttigieg announced that this project was an important transportation link, and the $82 billion cost, though the largest make-work project in the federal stimulus package, represents only 10% of the total.

“This project will result in nearly 24,400 new jobs, all on Long Island,” Buttigieg said.

For the first hundred yards, the route of the tunnel will follow the old abandoned tunnel; then, when it meets the reinforced concrete wall that is damming off all the oil, it will head off to the west.

“Westward ho,” our commissioner told the crowd. “And then northward and eastward ho.”

GOOD HUMOR, BAD HUMOR

A contract to allow the Good Humor ice cream company to send a Good Humor cart, pushed by a man in a white uniform ringing a bell, through all the subway cars has not been a success. Ice cream is getting sold, but only in a limited way.

On the first day of the service, it was found that the carts were too wide to fit through the doors separating the subway cars. As a result, Hamptons Subway decided to allow the Good Humor man to just stay in one car, ringing his bell constantly to tell folks throughout the train of his presence. The noise has scared off all passengers from the subway car where Good Humor has set up, causing crowding in the other cars and much soiled clothing as people holding ice cream push through the crowds to bring the popsicles to their kiddies.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

It seems to me to be a big waste of money for the Transit Authority to have us replace the tracks every 10 years. From long experience with the subway systems around this country, I can tell you that the steel’s shelf life is 40 years, and there is little necessity to replace it after just 10. (Both Uganda and Nepal replace theirs at 40.) Besides being a waste of money, it is a big inconvenience to our customers at this time as they pick their way through our limited service. We will, however, change the tracks, but only because if we didn’t, we would lose our license to operate next year.