At its Monday, June 25, meeting, West Windsor Council stopped short of introducing an ordinance to change the posted speed limit on Village Road from 45 miles per hour to 40. The administration had planned to hold a public hearing at the July 9 council meeting.
On June 25 Councilman George Borek made a motion to introduce the ordinance, but nobody on Council would second the motion. The next day, Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said he was shocked that the ordinance was not introduced. Hsueh said in his 20 years in government it is the first time he can recall seeing an elected local official stand up for keeping a higher speed limit on a much-traveled road.
That comment was reserved for Councilman Bryan Maher, who at the Council meeting made a strong argument against lowering the speed limit to 40. Hsueh feels that Maher is arguing just to publicly oppose him on any issue, just as Hsueh believes many West Windsor Republicans have done with their comments on the Grover farm and other issues at recent council meetings.
At his final Council meeting, Business Administrator Robert Hary informed Council that amending the town’s traffic and parking regulation had been discussed since the 1990s as residents complained about speeding cars on Village Road. The unofficial speed limit change pre-dates Mayor Hsueh’s time in town government, as he explained in an interview.
“The 50-mile-an-hour limit was set a long time back, when both sides of Village Road had mostly farmland and no houses. The mayor who took over in 1993 (Tom Frascella) decided to change it because of some new houses there. But he did so without going through the state process — he directly ordered that the sign be replaced by 45. Now I understand that it’s not legal; the police cannot enforce that speed limit,” Hsueh said.
Citing the potential for legal ramifications, Mayor Hsueh says the township is obligated to follow the state Department of Transportation regulations to change the speed along Village Road (from 50). He says a case where Hamilton Township decided to add stop signs served as a wake-up call to other municipalities.
“If you allow local government to make decisions without following state law, there will be stop signs everywhere,” Hsueh said.
The mayor says courts would not support any regulations other than state law, so a change to 40 would not be just at the request of people in the neighborhood. “Without DOT approval we may face liability after any kind of accidents or court cases,” Hsueh said.
Maher notes that the consultant’s report concluded that the minimum — not maximum — speed limit should be 40. “Eight-five percent of traffic goes through there at 42 to 48 miles per hour. Every single thing suggests that 45 is the right speed,” he said.
Maher thinks Hsueh is misleading the Council and the public on this issue and politicizing it. “Mayor Hsueh seems to think that if we don’t lower it to 40 we’re not abiding by the state’s laws. That’s certainly not the case. He makes it seem that Council made a decision against abiding by state rules or a state law,” Maher said.
He fired back at Hsueh over an apparent spin on the issue.
“I think the mayor has some nerve pointing the finger at us and accusing us of anything. I resent the mayor acting like this Council (and me) are out of line and in non-compliance with the state. He has been mayor for 11 years and during that entire time the posted speed limit of 45 miles an hour has been non-compliant with the state that says it should be 50. For 11 years as the mayor he’s allowed this to go on — and it’s been in non-compliance since 1993,” Maher said.
According to the DOT, Village Road is a regulated as a 50 mile-an-hour road. Police Chief Joe Pica says police enforcement of the speed limit typically involves some leeway. Cars in a 40-mile-an-hour zone might go up to 48 miles per hour without giving them a ticket. But Pica doesn’t not want to encourage cars to travel up to 50 or faster along Village Road.
Maher said that if Chief Pica were to present a report to Council suggesting a speed limit change, he would likely support it. Pica’s priority is community safety, which can only be abetted with a lower speed limit.
“I think it’s always better to have a lower speed limit. The lower the speed limit the better, unless you’re on a major highway. Personally I think 40 would be better than 45, but we’ve lived with the 45 for over 15 years without any major incidents, so I don’t think 40 or 45 would make much difference,” the chief said.
Said Maher: “My view is that we should just keep it at 45 as it is and pass an ordinance to abide by whatever the state regulation requires for dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s. By doing that we’ll solve the problem,” Maher says.
At the Council meeting Maher argued against the speed limit change for two main reasons. First, he’s critical of the traffic study submitted by Bordentown-based Remington, Vernick, and Arango, as its report was provided with Council’s packet on the June 25 agenda. Maher said “the study was garbage.”
“The report was a joke. It has no details of the number of accidents, deer-hits, or kids who play in the area. If we spent more than $100 for this study, it was way too much,” Maher said.
Hsueh disagrees, saying the traffic study was credible work done by one of the township’s regular engineering consulting firms. “It was a properly-done statistical analysis. How could that be garbage?” Hsueh asked.
Mayor Hsueh says the study was actually requested by Councilwoman Linda Geevers after a fatal accident occurred on Village Road in 2009, when Council (including Borek and Geevers) commissioned the traffic consulting firm to do a study. Results came to the township this year suggesting that the lowest that the speed limit could be set at, according to state regulations, would be 40 miles an hour.
After the June 25 meeting Maher obtained a copy of the 2009 fatality’s police report from Chief Pica. He learned that the 22-year-old male driving a Chevy Camaro who was killed in the crash was not wearing his seatbelt.
“One accident like that should not change the driving habits of the thousands of people a day who drive that road — I’m sorry but if we did that there was an accident somewhere we’d all be driving 20 miles an hour on every road,” he said.
Maher spoke to Pica about the incident on Monday, July 2, and Pica confirmed that speeding was not the cause of that crash. In an interview, Chief Pica acknowledged the premise that Maher has based his opposition on — car accidents along Village Road — do not warrant a reduction of the speed limit down to 40 miles per hour. He says that around 20 accidents a year occur along Village Road and most of them involve deer, not a vehicle’s speed, as a main cause.
“He asked me if there was any compelling or overwhelming public safety reasons why the speed limit should be 40, and I said no. But generally speaking, residents in our town want the lowest speed possible that they can get in their neighborhood,” the chief said.
Maher challenged members of Council and others in attendance on June 25 to drive down Village Road at 45 miles per hour, saying that it was not a fast speed for that stretch. He says he’s driven on Village Road every day for the last 15 years — often down to Quakerbridge Road with his cruise control set at 45 — without ever noticing a problemwith speeding cars.
“There are only a few residents who live on that corner, and in fact a couple of them were nice enough to put up signs for me during the election. I find it hard to believe there’s been lots of complaints,” he said.
Maher then called the proposed change a case of “heavy-handed big government” and an example of government creating a problem where there is none.
“If we have a problem with people speeding in the area, send a couple of police officers there during rush hours like they do to control speeding along Penn Lyle Road (where Maher lives) and other areas around town,” he said.
Borek, who before making the motion said “one fatality is one too many,” agreed with Maher on government intruding into certain areas of township life. But he remains for a lower speed limit.
“Let’s lower it and see how it works. If it’s working, fine. If it’s not working and it creates a dilemma where traffic gets backed up, we will see. I think we need to try it though,” Borek said.
For the mayor, although one issue on one road may seem small, a disturbing outcome would be West Windsor sending a message to the Department of Transportation, the state, and the county that the township cannot be worked with. “We didn’t used to get support from the state and county, and elected officials usually try to do their best here and they don’t pay so much attention to what goes on in Trenton. I’ve changed that in my 11 years as mayor — we had to come a long way to say we have a very good relationship with the state and Mercer County. But all of a sudden, a lot of things we are doing now are hurting that,” Hsueh said.
According to Mayor Hsueh, the total cost of implementing the speed limit change would have been $3,500.
