New ferry service to East Hampton thwarted

After seven years, efforts to overturn an East Hampton Town law banning new ferry service finally have come to an end, with the U.S. Supreme Court declining to hear an appeal to overturn a 2010 decision that upheld the town's ban.

That means there will be no new ferry service from New England directly to East Hampton Town.

The law was controversial when it was passed in 2004, when East Hampton said such a service would create traffic nightmares in the town.

The issue arose because Cross-Sound Ferry -- which takes tens of thousands of vehicles a year between Orient on the North Fork and New London, Conn. -- took a survey and found that 20 to 30 percent of the Orient-bound cars and trucks ended up going to the Hamptons.

The ferry was interested in creating a new service that would dock in Montauk, or perhaps Sag Harbor, eliminating the need for vehicles to take another ferry from Greenport to Shelter Island, and yet another from Shelter Island to North Haven.

But East Hampton officials feared a new ferry service would result in people driving through the town to go to Westhampton Beach and other places in Southampton Town. So they passed the law banning any new service, leaving the existing Montauk-to-Block Island ferry as the only one operating in the town.

That caused local officials in Southold and Shelter Island to join with Cross-Island to sue to overturn the law, but those officials have long since been voted out of office. Meanwhile, the lawsuit has slowly worked its way through the federal court system. In 2010, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals declined to review the case, saying the impact on interstate commerce was outweighed by the town's inherent ability to control traffic within its borders.

East Hampton Town Attorney John Jilnicki said Tuesday he was happy with the decision. Officials of the Cross-Sound Ferry Company could not be reached for comment.