U.S. Open crowds jam North Fork roads near Greenport ferry

The line to North Ferry in Greenport stretched back to the Welcome to Greenport sign before sunrise Tuesday, turning the village’s busiest escape route into a bottleneck for commuters heading to the South Fork. A driver’s video showed vehicles packed along Route 25, while residents on Facebook said the backup ran nearly to Sixth Street by about 5:35 a.m. and later stretched almost a mile past Mills Canvas on Main Road.

The scene underscored how quickly a golf tournament in Southampton can ripple across the North Fork. Mayor Kevin Steussi said the village and the wider North Fork had become a bypass for South Shore tractor-trailer and commuter traffic that funnels toward the ferry, and he said the U.S. Open was making an already strained system worse. The pressure landed at one of Suffolk County’s tightest transportation choke points, where village streets, through traffic and ferry lines all converge.

That congestion came despite a $3.1 million project intended to overhaul the North Ferry queue. The project was designed to expand staging from one lane to five and boost capacity from 36 vehicles to 74. Bridg Hunt, the ferry’s general manager, said all lanes were open by 6 a.m., though some lanes had been closed Monday from 5 to 9 a.m. because of what he called “scheduling confusion.”

Hunt also said North Ferry had begun running earlier boats, with departures at 5 a.m. and 5:15 a.m. to try to stay ahead of the rush. Under the company’s normal weekday schedule, the first departure from Greenport is 5:15 a.m., and boats generally run every 8 to 15 minutes during the day. North Ferry says it takes vehicles first come, first served, with no reservations, and drivers pay onboard. The fare page lists a one-way vehicle-and-driver rate of $16 and a same-day return rate of $26.

For Greenport, the timing matters because the 126th U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton was scheduled for June 18-21, with practice rounds earlier in the week and organizers expecting about 40,000 spectators per day and more than 150,000 over championship week. That is the same East End traffic surge that has long made the course a regional stress test. In 2018, reports from the same venue described traffic headaches severe enough that players worried about missing tee times.

For North Fork workers and anyone trying to get off the island before dawn, the message was plain: when the South Fork fills up, Greenport feels it fast.