Assessments Underway to Determine Ponquogue Bridge's Future

Assessments are currently underway by New York State Department of Transportation officials to determine what will be done to address issues with the Ponquogue Bridge after its Feb. 21 closure, according to a spokesperson for the Town of Southampton.

The bridge was closed on Friday after the department conducted a routine check on the structure and identified conditions that demanded the bridge’s closure. The bridge, which runs over the Shinnecock Bay in Hampton Bays, is closed indefinitely.

“The state has been out there all day today, rechecking some of the spots that they had identified in the routine inspection, taking a kind of a deeper dive into it to really get a better handle on exactly what’s going on,” Ryan Murphy, a spokesperson for the Town, said. “We’re still kind of in holding pattern, waiting to see what the new assessment data reveals to them and whatever actions they decide are necessary going forward.”

No further information on what was found to be wrong with the bridge was available, nor is a time frame on when the bridge could reopen.

“We hope it’s sooner than later, but we don’t know what the timeframe is yet,” Murphy continued. “The engineers were looking at the data over the weekend. I guess we could surmise that as a result of looking at that data, they wanted to get some additional information, so they sent a team back out today. They’ve been up on the bridge taking a closer look at things. I would imagine that we’ll be looking at at least another couple of days, or day or two for them to go over whatever their findings were today and figure out what can and can’t be done.”

Until then, the Town advised drivers to pursue alternate means of accessing Dune Road, and urged everyone to be mindful of the effect the bridge’s closure could have on traffic for the area.