Poll - Debate Over New Roadway Markings on Bergen Street Set to Resume Tomorrow. What's Your Opinion?

The will likely continue for a third straight meeting when members of Lawrence Township Council convene in the municipal building at 7 p.m. tomorrow (Oct. 18).

During their last meeting, held on Oct. 4, council members heard from about a dozen township residents on the topic, with about half speaking out against the new lines and the others supporting the new markings.

(Audio of the complete meeting, including the comments of all speakers, can be listened to from the media box at the right. At the bottom of this story is a poll where you can cast your vote for or against the new lines.)

The new markings – a double yellow line painted down the center of Bergen Street, white lines denoting wide shoulders on both sides of the road, pedestrian crosswalks and other lines and signage – are the result of the Complete Streets policy the township adopted last year as modeled on the national Complete Streets initiative. One of the goals of the Complete Streets program is to make roadways safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Responding to demands that the new lines and road markings be removed, made by some residents who spoke during the Sept. 20 council meeting, Township Manager Richard Krawczun during the Oct. 4 meeting explained that he had consulted with Township Engineer James Parvesse and determined that there are three methods that could be used if council decides that the new lines should be removed.

Black paint could be used to cover the yellow and white lines, Krawczun said, but he warned that the black paint would fade over time and eventually allow some of the yellow and white underneath to show through. Equipment could be used to physically grind away the lines or a jet of water could be employed to “hydroblast” the lines, but in both those scenarios the asphalt itself would be damaged and would likely show some “visual impact,” he said.

A cost estimate for each of those three removal methods was not available during the Oct. 4 meeting. Krawczun, however, noted that if the new lines and markings are removed it is possible that the township would have to forfeit a portion of the it received to help pay for the of Bergen Street between Lawrenceville-Pennington Road and Cold Soil Road.   

“Funding may be jeopardized if we change away from the Complete Streets implementation. That concept was included as part of our [grant] application,” Krawczun cautioned. “It’s not an absolute that funding would be lost [but] the possibility exists that NJ DOT would review that and determine whether or not any funding would have to be withheld.”

Krawczun also noted during the Oct. 4 meeting that the township police department would be conducting traffic surveys on Bergen Street to determine how many vehicles use the road on a daily basis and what speeds they are traveling. Such data is important, he said, in order for the township to respond to requests made by some residents during the Sept. 20 meeting that speed humps be installed on Bergen Street as an alternate method of slowing motorists down.

He said that, by law, on a two-lane road with a posted speed limit of 30 mph or less – such as Bergen Street, which has a 25 mph speed limit – the township can install speed humps without obtaining state Department of Transportation permission if traffic surveys show that less than 3,000 vehicles travel the road per day.

At the conclusion of the hour-long debate about Bergen Street on Oct. 4, Mayor Greg Puliti asked Krawczun to prepare for the next council meeting a cost estimate for each of the removal methods discussed. Councilman Bob Bostock, meanwhile, asked Krawczun to obtain statistics from the township police department about how many traffic accidents – including those involving bicyclists and pedestrians – have taken place on Bergen Street each year for the last decade and how many speeding tickets the police have issued on the road during the same time frame.

The Oct. 4 discussion began with Ruthann Jennings, who lives on Woodlane Road at the corner of Bergen Street, pointing out that Bergen Street now has 34 street signs over less than a mile’s length.

“I have seen, since you lined the road, negotiating the signs and lines is really becoming very dangerous,” said Jennings, who was among those who spoke against the new lines on Sept. 20. “A four-way crosswalk at my corner is completely inappropriate. There’s no reason to cross that intersection like you’re going to the bakery… It’s just the wrong design.

“We need to fix the fact that [Bergen Street] is too wide and that people speed on it,” Jennings said. “But the double-yellow line, the white lines on the side and the 34 signs are not going to make it a nicer street. If we need to narrow the street to make it look just like Yeger [Drive] or Dix [Lane], put speed bumps on it. Take the lines off the street. It’s unsightly and it’s definitely not safer. I’ve been looking at it every single day. People don’t know what to do with oncoming traffic… I live on the corner. We never had the issues we have now. I have cars stopping at my intersection where there’s no stop sign because there’s a four-way crosswalk. You need to revisit it….  It’s all very confusing and I believe unsafe.”

Babette Rutman, a resident of the 400 block of Bergen Street, expressed concern the township might in the future designate the new shoulders on Bergen Street as dedicated bicycle lanes which, in turn, would make it illegal for residents and their guests to park there. She was assured by Puliti and Krawczun that that was not the case and that the shoulders along Bergen Street would remain as “Share the Road” lanes where both bicyclists and parked vehicles will be allowed.

“Personally, it’s horrendous looking. It’s absolutely horrendous looking,” she said as she promised to attend every council meeting “until we figure this out.”

“Are you going to do this on every street that you pave from here on after? Are you going to do it on Dix Lane? Are you going to do it on every single side street? Bergen Street is no different than a residential neighborhood side street… So every street that you’re going to pave, you’re going to have to do the same line striping in the entire town? Is that your intention?” Rutman asked.

“The intention is not to do it on every single street,” Krawczun responded. “[It’s to do it] on streets where we can make it safer for pedestrians, where there’s adequate space, where we can improve bicycle movement. As you know, Bergen Street is much wider from curb-to-curb than some of the side streets. It would not be appropriate for every roadway in the town to be striped with the Complete Streets program concept. Some streets are just too narrow.” 

“I looked up the bid when you went out to bid and I thought that you made a mistake in the bid when you bid out our street,” Rutman said. “That’s what I really thought, originally. We weren’t given any voice before you did it. It’s been that way for – I don’t know how many years – 20 years as a black-top street. And I don’t think that the tax payers on that road were given the opportunity to come and say ‘Well, we really wouldn’t want that.’ You don’t live on that street, anybody here. So I don’t know why you wouldn’t have put out a notice to the residents like you would do anything else?”

 “Excuse me, when we do projects we don’t put out notice to the residents,” Puliti answered. “We advertise them here, with the bids. And it’s published in the newspaper.”

“It’s really not a pretty residential street… I just don’t think it’s fair to the residents of Bergen Street, who you represent. It’s just ugly, just absolutely ugly… It’s just not right. It’s just not a pretty thing,” Rutman told the council members.

Rutman addressed council a second time later in the meeting to voice her opinion that the new shoulders on Bergen Street are not safe for joggers and bicyclists to use because that is where residents leave their yard waste.

“The shoulder of the road on Bergen Street is typically filled with leaf collection,” she said. “That shoulder is where everybody puts their leaf collection, that’s where everybody puts their shrub collection, and 90 percent of the time that stuff is out in the street.”

Scott Bentivegna, a resident of the 100 block of Nassau Drive who said he runs “a half-marathon every weekend on Lawrence streets,” also spoke out against the new lines.

“I’m here tonight to request removal of the traffic lines on Bergen. I request dropping the Complete Streets model as it applies to Lawrence,” he said. “As a runner, it’s probably in my best interest to have safe roads available, and that’s what people are trying to achieve here. All of my routes include Bergen Street… Prior to the line striping I thought probably Bergen was one of the safer streets that we had in Lawrence. Now, unfortunately, it’s no longer one of the safest streets… The misconception is that these white lines are somehow a safe zone for walkers or runners or bikers.”

He said parked vehicles and debris left at the side of the road now force joggers to enter the main part of the roadway. “So what you have now is you’re directing people out into the main flow of traffic. If there were no lines at all, cars would typically just go around both the obstacle and the runner or pedestrian. What happens now is people will continue on their side of the line and try to almost force the bicyclist or runner to stop where they are. In fact it’s happened so many times I’ve even given a name to it. I call it a ‘life break’ where I actually have to stop running and get off the road just so somebody doesn’t actually hit me. So it’s a misconception and a myth that these white lines or wide shoulders actually make it safer. So, with all urgency, I urge you to take those lines off.”

But Nassau Drive residents Donald Pillsbury, his wife Jacquelyn and their 9-year-old daughter Ashley all spoke in support of the new lines.

“I am in favor of the approach that was applied,” Donald Pillsbury said, noting that the new lines visually reduce the width of Bergen Street – much of which is 34 feet wide – in an effort to slow the speed of drivers. “Anecdotally – I have no numbers – I see more people using the shoulders for walking and jogging.”

He spoke of his daughter’s daily walks to and from her school bus stop. “My daughter has to get from the corner of Yeger and Bergen to Nassau and Bergen. It happens to be the one stretch that does not have a sidewalk. I know [Rutman] said [Bergen Street] has double-sided sidewalks. But you know what, the one spot where she needs it, it’s not there. And with having the stripes it provides a buffer. Without the white line, cars [would] come swooping around that corner very close to the curb. Now with the line they stay further away,” he said.   

“I like the lines because it’s nice when a get off the school bus and I can walk in the shoulder without the cars going close to the curb,” 9-year-old Ashley Pillsbury told council.

Also speaking in favor of the new lines was Graydon Newman, a Fairfield Avenue resident who works in South Jersey as a transportation planner.

“I just wanted to express support for the Complete Streets policy and also for the striping that’s on Bergen. When I first moved here I went on a walk to [Village Park] with my girlfriend and we were kind of amazed there wasn’t a crosswalk there to provide access for people that don’t live on Bergen Street. I do empathize with you on Bergen Street – this is a big change visually. It’s also a big change because it’s all new. [But] it’s newer paint that fades pretty quickly. Within probably six months I think it’ll be a much different visual picture,” he said.

“I’d also like to allay some concerns that Complete Streets is particularly urban. In New Jersey, I think, there are 14 municipalities that have passed it. Jersey City is really the only one I would call urban. Montclair is semi-urban…” Newman said. “The municipalities that I work with that are considering the Complete Streets policy are smaller and less urban than Lawrenceville by a good shot – Cape May City, Linwood… And I think when we consider that street, we not only need to consider residents that live on that street but also all the roadway users. That’s specifically what the policy addresses… If I was walking where there’s not a sidewalk – as the comments that just came up – I would feel much more comfortable with a shoulder. And, personally, biking, in my experience, I am much more safe if there’s a shoulder.

“That white line is a visual cue to the driver where they need to travel and, regardless of traffic speeds, you are insulating to a degree a person on the side of that roadway. Some people are considering this a visual impediment to enjoyment of that neighborhood, but I think a lot more people in this community would consider it an amenity to be able to bike safely on a road that previously was less bike-safe. So, I think that’s another frame of reference. The Complete Streets policy applies to the entire community. So thanks for doing it. I appreciate it, personally,” Newman said.

Peter Kremer, a Laurel Wood Drive resident who also works in the transportation planning field, spoke at length in favor of the new lines. At the start of his talk, he acknowledged that he is a member of the Lawrence Township zoning board but noted that he was speaking not as a member of that board but purely as a township resident.  

“If a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle traveling at 40 mph, there’s an 80 percent chance of that crash resulting in a fatality. At 20 mph that potential reduces to less than 20 percent. This is a dramatic difference and it really makes the point that the entire issue here is safety. It’s nothing else,” Kramer said.

“First of all, Bergen Street has been characterized as a local, quiet little street. It is not a local street. It is a collector street, and that’s not my opinion. That is the opinion directly from our township Master Plan. I believe that Bergen Street has been designated as a collector for the entire time that it has gone all the way through from Lawrenceville-Pennington Road to Cold Soil Road. The purpose of a collector street is to collect and distribute traffic between higher-level streets and adjacent developmental streets. Bergen Street functions in exactly this manner. It’s a residential collector street that moves traffic between Lawrenceville-Pennington Road, Gordon Avenue, Cold Soil Road and adjacent homes and streets. Despite its residential context – and again it is a residential collector, and that’s a perfectly valid type of street – it plays a significant role in our street system. We may believe that it’s a quiet street but it is not. Our insistence to the contrary for 20-some years is exactly what has allowed drivers to exceed the speed limit with impunity…

“My understanding is that roadway design gives drivers a cue as to how to use a street – the geometrics, the curvature, even the roadway surface all figure into how a street is used, how fast people will drive regardless of what the speed limit sign says. A wide, straight, flat street – which is exactly what Bergen Street is – provides no feedback to the driver. So you can pretty much drive as fast as you want on that street. And it happens every day. Bergen Street certainly fits this category – wide, straight, flat. In fact, it’s width of 34 feet – and in some places it’s wide than that – is wider than most of Princeton Pike [or] Keefe Road; it’s very similar to portions of U.S. 206 north of I-95, which I think most of is about 36 feet wide.

“So Bergen lacks the most basic geometric features that might encourage or force drivers to slow down to speeds that are consistent with its residential context,” Kremer continued. “Many people have mentioned that Bergen Street is a primary draw for non-motorized traffic in North Lawrence. It’s really the only street in North Lawrence that you can go any significant distance. As a bicyclist, you can’t use Keefe Road – Keefe Road is too narrow.

“Generally, Bergen Street is a draw for that sort of traffic. There are bikers, runners, rollerbladers, skateboarders, families, people waiting at bus stops and yes, even though Craven Lanes doesn’t go through, quite a few people walk to [Lawrenceville Elementary School] with their parents. Its sidewalks, crosswalks, and access to residential developments, LES and Village Park all make Bergen Street the most significant generator of non-motorized traffic in North Lawrence. So I believe there’s a mismatch here between the perception, the design and the use of Bergen Street.

“What can you do to slow traffic? Enforcement is one method. But as we’ve seen, as soon as you’ve passed the police car or the police are gone, everybody goes back to their typical driving speeds,” Kramer said.

He acknowledged that speed hump are an option, but he said he counted seven speed humps on a 0.8-mile stretch of Stonicker Drive. “My experience is that people typically speed up back to the speed they want to travel between the speed humps and then they slam on their brakes and slow down when they have to cross a speed hump. So I’m not sure how affective it is. If you think that paint has brought people out to complain, I can’t imagine what the uproar would be if you started talking about half-a-dozen speed humps on Bergen Street…

“Passive speed restraint – people don’t have to believe it but it’s very much accepted practice that narrowing the travel lane provides some benefit of slowing travel speeds. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s simple, it’s cost effective and it’s something that’s easy to do,” he said.

Kremer said many of the problems residents are complaining about on Bergen Street would be solved if motorists obeyed simple traffic laws. “If there’s a vehicle coming from the other direction and you can’t get around a parked car, then you have to yield. It’s a simple right-of-way rule.”

As for yard waste blocking the shoulders of the road, he noted, “We have an ordinance in this township that yard waste can only be left out one week prior to pickup, so leaving yard waste out on Bergen Street for the entire month is a violation of that ordinance. So if it’s debris in the shoulder, that’s a road hazard created by the resident. In my neighborhood – I don’t live on a through-street – we try to keep it off the street. That the residents’ responsibility.”

In response to the concerns voiced by some residents at the Sept. 20 meeting that the new lines will have a negative effect on their property values, Kremer said, “In my work, I’ve never seen, nor am I aware of, any research that correlates roadway striping with an impact on property values.”

He noted that the Complete Streets policy was discussed at several public meetings and reported in local newspapers before it was adopted by the township last year. “It was indeed an open process. There was nothing secret about it,” he said, noting that the Complete Streets policy is “part of the big picture in making Lawrence Township a safer, healthier and more welcoming place.”

“The Complete Streets concept is not something they just do in places like Berkeley, Calif. It’s very much the mainstream of planning and design. The policy has been adopted in 25 states by hundreds of jurisdictions across the country, including everything from small towns to large cities,” he said. 

“What the road looks like is an aesthetic issue. Aesthetics is a personal preference. I can’t dispute what you perceive. I can tell you what I perceive. I perceive is that what I see is entirely appropriate in this context, for this type of street… Regardless of what the road looks like, aesthetics do not trump safety. You don’t not have a guardrail because someone thinks it looks ugly, you do not do something that’s safer because or person or 20 people don’t like the way it looks…. I fully understand if you wake up one day and your street looks dramatically different than when you went to sleep and you didn’t know it was going to happen, you’d be upset. But I also believe that over time most people will come to see the new look of Bergen Street as a safer street that serves the township and its residents.”