Light’s up at Flanders intersection

TIM GANNON PHOTO
State highway workers installing a new traffic light Monday at
Flanders Road and Bellows Pond Road in Flanders, where three
people have been killed in car accidents in six years.

State workers were installing a new traffic light Monday at the intersection of Flanders Road and Bellows Pond Road, where three people have died in two separate car accidents since 2004.
The State Department of Transportation began planning the installation of the light last fall in response to a request from Southampton Town Police Chief James Overton in 2008, at which point the state launched a study of the proposal, said DOT spokeswoman Eileen Peters.
Bellows Pond Road is sometimes used by cars as a bypass around Hampton Bays traffic. But the route doesn’t always prove to be quicker, as cars waiting to turn left on Flanders Road from Bellows Pond Road often have to wait a long time for traffic to clear, the state’s study found.
The Flanders traffic light is the second to go up in the Riverhead area this spring. The county recently installed a light at County Road 51 and Lake Avenue in Northampton, where in February a 21-year-old Greenport man was killed when his car collided with a Suffolk Transit bus.
The intersection was redesigned in the 1990s due to a high number of fatalities there, but the accidents, including fatal crashes, continued.
TIM GANNON