July 3rd 2009 • HOME •

Editorial: The Vehicle Problem

Motor vehicles and nature do not get along very well. To give just one example, Fire Island once abounded in the lovely tiger beetle--now totally done in by vehicles on the beach.

One solution--one no one (including us) seems to want--would be a highway down the center of the island. Indeed, there was once a major effort, by Robert Moses, to put a highway down the middle of Fire Island. This was one of the few battles that he ever lost. Fire Islanders wanted to be essentialy vehicle-free. The delightfulness of Fire Island was long understood to be closely related to the fact that hardly any cars were present. It was the absence of automobiles that made walking so pleasant. One could relax here in a way that one could not in the presence of motorized traffic.

But there is always some who have been in a hurry to get where they are going, or to make a buck. They think that in the absence of roads, they should have the right to drive anywhere they want. And given the fact that our political system tends to be much more responsive to motorists than pedestrians, the former tend to have their way. Their horsepower gives drivers an unjustified sense of importance. People on foot know that they have to scatter when a vehicle comes along. So much for any pleasant strolling.

In 1998 the National Park Service announced some very moderate restrictions on beach vehicles. (See http://www.nps.gov/fiis/plan/plan.html) It wasn't for the sake of people; it was to save the piping plover. Thus, pedestrians did not mobilize in support. Motorists, on the other hand, mounted a hue and cry, and the leaders of the property owners associations chimed in. Fortunately, the NPS stood its ground However, this did not do pedestrians much good; there are far too many vehicles around.

FIE believes that to the extent that there must be vehicles, they should usually use the interior "Burma Road." From March though November only emergency vehicles should be allowed to use the beach. Police and NPS personnel should use beach vehicles much more sparingly than they have. As for vehicles in the villages, they should usually be confined to roadways where such exist, and leave the boardwalks for humans. In Fire Island Pines, for example, they should use Fire Island Boulevard where possible. Where there is no road but only a boardwalk, only vehicles less than half the width of the boardwalks should be allowed. Exceptions should be by application, on an incident-by-incident basis. Year-around residents might find this a hardship, but we think they should only be allowed to drive on the beach when the bay is frozen over, and only at low-tide when damage to flora can be minimized. If they want to drive more than that, there are plenty of other places in the country that allow their preferred lifestyle. Let's let Fire Island be Fire Island. And for those who do not want Fire Island to be Fire Island, we say, at least let Fire Island be. Beach vehicles are devastating to the beach and dune plants, which are vital to the very existence of this barrier beach (see our Flora page). And if we are going to share the island with birds like the piping plover and least tern, vehicles simply have to be greatly restricted. Alas, NPS efforts to protect these birds have generated a nasty backlash on the part of some vehicle advocates.

Fire Island is always in danger of being breached. Politicians on the island have an ambivalent attitude toward such dangers. One the one hand they try to scare people, arguing that any danger is reason to support them. On the other hand, their policies tend to contribute to the problem rather than ameliorate it. The way to minimize the risk is to minimize beach driving. The presence of vehicles on the beach means that there must be cuts through the dunes to accommodate them. Some say that this weakens the over-all dune system; others say that the water is bound to break through somewhere, sometime, and it might as well be at places of man's choosing. But has anyone thought this out? One of the cuts is in the middle of Fire Island Pines near the post office, community house, and clinic. Is that where Piners want the island to be breached? Other offensive cuts are at Sailors Haven, Oakleyville, and near the Lighthouse. (Some of these exist at the behest of FINS for their vehicles.)

In early 1998, when the ocean came through the dunes by the Lighthouse and disrupted vehicle traffic on the Burma Road between the Bridge and Western communities, the Fire Island Association sent out a newsletter predicting a massive breach in order to put a scare into vehicle owners (into making donations to FIA?). What the association failed to mention was that the ocean had sneaked through the vehicle cut. The solution seems obvious enough to us.

Updated 21 May 2003