In a recent letter to the editor a Plainsboro Road resident Peter Pfister charged that the township’s $650,”000 project for the intersection of Dey Road, Edgemere Avenue, and Plainsboro Road called for “intrusive equipment” that required the removal of trees, lawns, and landscaping of residential property in the area that will be paved over creating “as much curb appeal as all the old buildings in any inner city.”##M:[more]## He also charged that the township finalized plans without considering the “input of anyone from the neighborhood.”
But Plainsboro Township Administrator Bob Sheehan says that the plans have not been finalized and that township officials have tried to address resident concerns throughout the process. “We had a meeting with residents in the area at town hall about two months ago and we even met with some residents who couldn’t attend the meeting individually,” he says. “These discussions have been a part of the ongoing process.”
But, Sheehan adds, changes in the intersection are essential. “We need to install a traffic signal and we will do so with a minimal amount of disruption,” he says. “But it is an essential improvement. We need to control the traffic in the area and there are some sightline issues that need to be taken care of.”
But with three residential properties of historical significance bordering the intersection all set close to the road, Sheehan admits that some residents may not be pleased with the final design. “It’s not easy,” he says. “Some properties will have a signal pole on their property. Some won’t be happy. But we are trying to sort out the best way to improve the area with a minimum amount of disruption.”
Sheehan adds that the township has received several grants for the project and is now in the latter stages of the design. “We are continuing to move the project forward,” he says. Construction is expected to begin in the late summer or early autumn.
Despite the concerns of Pfister, a resident of one of the homes bordering the Edgemere Avenue/Dey Road/Plainsboro Road intersection, other area residents see the necessity of the upgrades. Connie Sohl, a resident in the area, says she has mixed emotions. “I worked on the committee to move the World War II memorial (that was near that intersection) to the municipal complex because they knew they had to put a traffic light there,” she says. “That was five or six years ago.”
Sohl feels that the ever increasing commuter traffic traveling through the intersection makes a traffic light essential. “It is a very bad intersection and there have been a lot of accidents there,” she says. “It is just cockeyed enough to make it very dangerous. When trying to get through that intersection, one driver always has to decide to go first and that’s when the accidents happen.”
While the historical nature of the three homes in the area are a concern and efforts must be made to preserve them, some residents have complained that the tall bushes set along the edges of the corner property to the west when stopped on Dey Road heading south pose a hazard. “The extended bushes there make it very difficult,” says one resident, who preferred to remain anonymous. “You can’t see anything when you are trying to come out of Dey Road. If they did away with those bushes it is just possible that we wouldn’t have this problem.”
But Sheehan says that while it is possible that the bushes may contribute to the difficulties at the intersection and that the township has provisions to have them trimmed or removed, the problem is much larger. “The fundamental problem is that the sight lines are askew,” he says. “We need to control the flow of traffic in a more orderly fashion, and while trimming bushes may help, it wouldn’t solve the problem.”
In an update of a related story from last October, residents living along Edgemere Avenue, Parkway, and Pond View, are still seeking ways that the township would more aggressively enforce its speeding laws and stop sign enforcement along Edgemere Avenue.
At that time, residents presented a petition signed by over 100 citizens to Township Committee asking them to address the problem. Cliff Maurer, Plainsboro’s director of public safety, told residents that police regularly set up in the area to nab speeders. But there also were efforts to improve the situation already underway, including the trimming of trees to make road signs more visible in the area, replacing worn street signs with high-intensity signs, repainting crosswalks, building new sidewalks at the upper and lower end of Edgemere Avenue to help in traffic calming, and he said that consideration was being given to reducing the speed limit to 25 miles-per-hour.
Maurer also said that announcements of selective traffic enforcement of the area would be placed on the township’s cable channel bulletin board and the emergency E-mail network that informs major corporations of emergency conditions. He also said that a traffic light would be installed at the intersection of Dey Road, Plainsboro Road, and Edgemere Avenue in 2005.
According to Maurer, much of the earlier work has been done and the township will continue selective enforcement in the area. “There was a complaint made, we heard the residents’ concerns regarding the complaint,” says Maurer. “We are focusing on the entire area.”
But while there have been improvements, residents still feel that the situation has not been fully corrected. “Sometimes it seems that Mayor Cantu has forgotten that he is there to serve the people of the community first,” says Les Corliss, a resident of the township for over 40 years. Corliss says that speeders are still prevalent, as well as drivers who use stop signs as yield signs, sending any nearby pedestrians scurrying for the curb in order to get out of harm’s way.
One area that has not improved at all, says Sohl, is enforcement at the stop signs along the side streets of Edgemere Avenue. “No one stops at those stop signs, especially at Parkway,” she says. “The only time they will slow down is if they see a car coming along Edgemere. The police aren’t dealing with this at all and it is a real problem for pedestrians.”
Sohl says that township efforts to stymie speeders have had only partial success. “After the article came out (in October) and we handed in the petition, there was a lot of activity from the police department,” says Sohl. “There were electrical speed alert signs regularly set up on Parkway and it was on the television bulletin board. But we have a lot of commuter traffic here and this needs to be a continuing ongoing effort.”
Sohl says that she has been told by township officials that simply handing out a bevy of speeding tickets won’t ultimately solve the problem. She remains dubious. “Enough speeding tickets have been handed out along the 25 miles-per-hour main street in Cranbury that you would never dare risk speeding through there,” she says. “But I think that’s the only way some people will get the message.”
An important concern for residents last October was the possibility of lowering the speed limits along Edgemere Avenue and Maple Avenue from 35 miles-per-hour to 25 miles-per-hour. While that has not yet become a reality, residents may soon get their wish. “We have submitted some of the data to the state and we are in the process of submitting more documentation,” says Maurer. The process is likely to take several more months.
