The East Hampton Star this week adds to the 50-year commemorations of seminal events on the East End of Long Island in the early 1970s, when its transition to being a weekend and warm-weather retreat for ordinary (but affluent) New Yorkers kicked in. This short article’s focus is the Hampton Jitney, the preferred connection for those Gothamites without personal transport. A longer business history could surely be written on the Jitney–a classic case of entrepreneurs discovering a need that others hadn’t identified. (In actuality, its service to Manhattan didn’t begin until 1976.) But there’s also the flip side of this success: the failure of the Long Island Rail Road to anticipate and capture this traffic. The LIRR, owned by the state of New York since the mid-1960s, has a rich history that includes connections to the South Fork (Hamptons) since the 1880s. Over the last 50-plus years, however, it has failed to offer easy, frequent and comfortable rides from convenient locations such that even a value-conscious adult passenger would choose its service over the Jitney and similar bus shuttles. Although a train ought to have speed advantages during periods of road congestion, the LIRR rarely achieves that edge. Despite a key right-of-way that it has maintained through decades of dramatic real-estate appreciation along the route, the railroad has played only a cameo role in the remarkable story of the contemporary Hamptons, leaving room for a once-lowly form of conveyance, the jitney, to assume modern appeal.
Hampton Jitney’s Tale Is LIRR’s Shame
Tim W. Ferguson 