Editorial
Tisbury's dereliction
August 25, 2005
The Steamship Authority appears to be losing patience with the Tisbury selectmen over traffic control at the Vineyard Haven terminal. It’s no wonder.
Islanders generally, along with their visiting neighbors, friends, and relatives, ought to share the view expressed last week by Marc Hanover, the Vineyard Steamship Authority member, and Wayne Lamson, the boatline’s general manager.
“Gridlock,” Mr. Hanover called it, in a letter published in The Times on August 18, “That is what Vineyard Haven has to offer this summer, thanks to the Tisbury selectmen’s stubborn and ill-conceived refusal to provide any police services for traffic management around Water Street.”
Mr. Hanover describes a traffic situation that cannot be much worse, but might be better — and certainly safer — were it not for Tisbury’s dereliction.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Mr. Hanover continued, describing the financial means furnished Tisbury to help improve traffic and pedestrian flows in the vicinity of the Steamship terminal, especially at the times when a ferry arrives and autos and passengers disembark by the hundreds. “In 2003, SSA customers paid Tisbury $46,198 from their fares to foot the entire bill for police services during the summer, and traffic flowed rather freely through Vineyard Haven that year. But in 2004, the Tisbury selectmen refused to assign any policemen to traffic duty in the area during the summer, despite the fact that SSA customers paid Tisbury over five times that amount ($267,702) from their fares that year to be used ‘solely’ for the purpose of ‘mitigating the impacts of ferry service’ on the town…”
No one imagines that at the height of the season, when a boat arrives on a day that is overcast, and when the beach is uninviting to many, that traffic in Vineyard Haven will be a breeze. But a reasonable person expects that every effort will be made by public safety officials to relieve the hamstringing jam of traffic that at times last week extended to the west of Cronig’s on State Road and to the east of the Lagoon Pond drawbridge on Beach Road.
But, Mr. Hanover asks, “What are SSA customers getting from the Tisbury selectmen in return for the hundreds of thousands of ‘mitigation’ dollars they are paying to the town? Nothing whatsoever. By contrast, the towns of Oak Bluffs and Nantucket, which similarly receive money from SSA customers under the new ‘ferry passenger embarkation fee’ statute, use that money to mitigate the most serious and obvious impact of the SSA’s ferry service — traffic.”
As for the Tisbury police chief, it shouldn’t matter that his three bosses will not do their duty. He is a sworn professional public-safety officer whose duty is to protect and serve. To suggest, as he has, that a) it’s not such a big problem, or b) there’s nothing helpful to be done about it, is to duck his responsibility.
In August on Martha’s Vineyard, traffic can be a nightmare, but Tisbury leadership, and its police chief can help. Maybe they can make it just a bad dream. They have the responsibility. They have abundant means given them. In fact, they even have officers detailed to the scene of the chaos, although the selectmen and the police chief have instructed these officers to do nothing about auto traffic and concentrate on pedestrians only. So drivers fight their battles on their own, while the traffic officers look on unmoved. (Dear reader, naturally you are astonished. So are we all.)
Till now, the selectmen and the chief have preferred to whine and posture and passively obstruct. But, the time’s come for them to do their duty. Tisbury residents and taxpayers, indeed Islanders and taxpayers of all the towns, have every right to expect it.
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