Special meeting date set for Main St. redesign discussion
Will take place Sept. 25 at 6 p.m. in council chambers
The Asbury Park City Council will hold a special meeting in September with representatives of the New Jersey Department of Transportation [NJDOT] to discuss the state’s proposed redesign of Main Street, and local business owners and residents are invited to weigh in.
Commonly referred to as the “road diet,” the plan would reconfigure Rt. 71, or Main Street, from the current four lane roadway into two through traffic lanes with a turning lane in the center. Two bike lanes will be added between the through lanes and parking lanes on both sides.
The affected roadway includes the entire length of Main Street in Asbury as well as Deal Lake Drive from Main Street to Grand Avenue.
At the present juncture, the NJDOT is “still in the preliminary design stage but are looking to advance to the final design,” city engineer Joe Cunha said at Wednesday’s council meeting.
At the special meeting, members of the NJDOT will make a presentation on the proposed redesign after which the floor will be opened to the public to ask questions and address concerns, City Redevelopment and Planning Director Donald Sammet said.
“We expected that there might be a large [public] turnout,” said City Attorney Frederick Raffetto. “We are going to have representatives here from the DOT who will make a presentation and it could be a lengthy process.”
Given the number of items that are typically on the city council’s meeting agenda it was determined it would be best to set the matter aside for a special meeting, he said.
The meeting is scheduled for Sept. 25 at 6 p.m. It will be held in council chambers.
Preliminary questions from council members in regard to issues raised at previous meetings have been forwarded to the DOT spokesperson, Cunha said. The issues include loading zones for businesses that take deliveries during the day, school bus stops, and how the redesign would affect traffic patterns at the intersection of Lake Avenue, Springwood Avenue and Main Street.
A concerted effort to notify business owners who have storefronts on Main Street will be made by the chamber of commerce and the police department.
Jackie Pappas, executive director of the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce, will serve as the point person for the Asbury business community to get the word out about the meeting. Asbury Park Police Chief Mark Kinmon will also enlist the help of special officers to assist in passing out flyers to the businesses, he said.
Benefits of the road reconfiguration include a reduction of pedestrian accidents, improved safety for bicyclists, reduction of rear-end and side-swipe crashes and a higher compliance to the speed limit, which decreases the severity of crashes when they do occur, according to the NJDOT website.
The NJDOT has planned to implement the road diet from Neptune all the way into Allenhurst. Those municipalities have already given the state the go ahead, Cunha previously told the Sun.
Since Asbury Park contains the largest amount of roadway of all the municipalities included in the redesign, is the lynchpin in the state’s plan, according to Sammet.
“Basically, if we don’t want it, they are not going to do it,” he said.
Cunha said the NJDOT has, in the past, amended other road diet plans after hearing concerns from municipalities.
Once such case involved the redesign of Route 33 in Neptune from Main Street to Route 35. The original design included Route 33 from Main Street to Route 18. Because the NJDOT was met with so much concern from representatives of the Jersey Shore Medical Center as to how the new traffic pattern would affect their daily operations, the area of the roadway that was eventually redesign was shortened.
“It was meant to go out to Rt. 18,” he said, “and it didn’t.”
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