Changes coming to North Ferry line: Aim is to relieve traffic on Greenport streets

Drivers lining up to board the North Ferry in Greenport have recently experienced changes that will continue until work is completed to relieve Village roads from heavy traffic at peak hours.

Plans have been explored for years, resulting in little more than moving traffic problems from Wiggins Street to other Greenport roadways.

This is the first time a plan holds the promise of relieving a bottleneck on Wiggins Street by creating a series of five lanes that culminate in direct access to boats, according to Heights Property Owners Corporation (HPOC) General Manager Stella Lagudis. The HPOC owns North Ferry.

Instead of traffic traveling along Wiggins Street up to Ninth Street and, on occasion,  along Route 25, most of the time the vehicle lineup will be contained in the five lanes, Ms. Lagudis said.

When the project is completed, instead of one line from Wiggins Street feeding into a turnaround to board a boat, there will be five lanes established that will accommodate many more vehicles.

Getting the plan in place has been a project led by Greenport Village officials in cooperation with North Ferry, forming a public-private partnership, Ms. Lagudis said.

The Ferry Company was able to apply for grant money to facilitate work that needs to be done to reroute traffic. Construction work will be done to dig up parking areas that will hold the line of vehicle traffic.

Besides the effort to find a solution locally, the plan had to pass muster with the State Department of Transportation.

The aim is to complete the project before the summer influx of people to the area, but Mother Nature may have a say on completing the work on time, Ms. Lagudis said. As contractors begin tearing up existing parking areas to accommodate the much larger area for the ferry line, work could also be impacted by what they find as they dig up that space, she said.

“There’s nothing that’s perfect,” Ms. Lagudis said. But unlike previously explored alternatives, most of the time, traffic should move quickly along Wiggins Street to access the five lanes that will be created to accommodate most of the vehicles.

Signage is on order and should go up shortly to advise motorists of the changes. Ferry personnel will be on hand to block drivers who try to enter the ferry line from Third Street instead of joining the existing line on Wiggins Street.

Currently, ferry personnel are working to “get the kinks out” and push forward with the work, Ms. Lagudis said.