Tree roots. Food poisoning from spoiled oysters. For Hamptons beachgoers, there are few things worse than driving east on a Friday afternoon in August. When you get to Southampton, there’s basically only one lane in and one lane out on Route 27. What would normally be a two-hour-plus drive from Manhattan—depending on which Hampton you usually go to—can quickly become a three-hour-plus odyssey on a Friday.
Now add in a political fundraiser on Friday night for Donald Trump, whose recent assassination prompted calls for increased security, and you have enough congestion to drive Hamptons crazy. On Friday, Cantor Fitzgerald Chief Executive Officer Howard Lutnick Bridgehampton Eventscontributing to the never-ending traffic from Riverhead to Amagansett that lasted late into the night, with reports of trips lasting more than five hours from JFK and the city, with even the backroads and residential streets packed with vehicles.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. Alison P., who works at a hair salon in Bridgehampton and asked that her last name not be used. “I hope there’s some kind of investigation. This is very dangerous.”
The reason is that vehicles on main roads, side roads, highways and everywhere else are basically stopped or moving slowly towards their destination for hours on end.
When the President Joe Biden visited the Hamptons in late June, his plane landed at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton. But Biden then took Marine One to East Hampton Airport, a short drive from his fundraiser. But while Trump also landed in Westhampton—around 5:30 p.m.—his motorcade took him about 25 miles to Bridgehampton, where he arrived about an hour later.
“There was road rage and big trucks coming the wrong way. It was a little scary,” Alison said. But when her usual 20-minute commute home turned into a nearly hour-and-a-half trip, she did the same, taking the other side of the road until she was close enough to pull off a dead-end and walk the rest of the way.
Riva Gruen and her husband left their Southampton Airbnb apartment on a Friday night to make a 6 p.m. dinner reservation at the nearby restaurant Cowfish. The map predicted a 10-minute drive, but they finally arrived at 6:30 p.m. due to traffic. And after the couple finished dinner, they faced even worse congestion: Traffic was just stopped, and there were no signs explaining the road closure, leaving them with nowhere to go.
“It was crazy,” Gruen said. “People were turning around all over the place, thinking they could get around and go the other way—and there was really no way to get through.” After trying “multiple times” to get anywhere, they finally asked a cop about the situation. He gave them directions to a local dingy bar, where they sat for a while, though they ended up waiting in the car for an hour in the pouring rain after getting bored of the bar. They finally got home about two hours after finishing their meal.
“I’m someone who doesn’t like being stuck in places like that. That’s a trigger point for me. Like, not moving, you can’t go anywhere—I don’t like that,” she said. Being a Democrat, she added, made things worse.
Others were excited about the former president’s visit. Trump fans lined the streets near the airport and surrounding areas to cheer on the Republican presidential nominee as he arrived and departed.
Some people planned to run errands in the morning and then hid to avoid the traffic jams caused by Trump’s fundraiser. A man walking his dog in East Hampton Village after the excitement died down said he wished he had known Trump was coming.
“I’m going to make a sign that says ‘Fuck Trump’ and [stood] on the side of the road and proudly display it.”
The Southampton Police Department, which has jurisdiction over the area Trump will be traveling through, issued an advisory ahead of the visit on Friday, warning of “road closures and heavy congestion.” Signs were also posted along the roads, but for security reasons, details of Trump’s trip could not be shared in advance.
