BERKELEY – Some residents said that development has caused a lot of traffic and speeding in neighborhoods between Route 9 and the Garden State Parkway.
The area is off Hickory Lane. This is a road that used to be mostly wooded, with a few warehouses and light industrial businesses, dead ending at the Ocean County Utilities Authority. Over time, residential developments have taken the place of trees.
Drivers go through Butternut Lane and Amsterdam Avenue to skip Central Boulevard and Route 9. Even nearby Maryland Avenue has slightly raised crosswalks and signage urging drivers to slow down.
The houses are usually large and the roads curve in strange angles, causing a limited sight distance. Coupled with people parking on the street, it makes for some tight corners.
Scott Alfano of Amsterdam Avenue came to a Township Council meeting and said that there have been several developments filling in the area, providing “a hundred homes and hundreds of cars.”
Some of these drivers speed and don’t stop all the way at stop signs, he said.
“Berkeley Township School District even had to change the bus route for safety,” he said.
He said he even saw police cars run the stop signs. He wants speed humps, the gentler version of speed bumps, and he’d like to see the speed limit lowered from 25 to 15 miles per hour. Police need to be present in the neighborhood for enforcement.
“We need something to prevent it from being a drive-through neighborhood,” he said.
Currently, there are markings on the asphalt near the corner of Timberline Road and Butternut reminding drivers that it is only 25 mph. A stop sign on Amsterdam near the intersection with Butternut has blinking lights surrounding it to call attention to it. These changes were made after the complaints to the township.
Bill Mitchell, who also lives in the area, said he was hit by a car while he was walking on the road. When he calls out to drivers to slow down and watch out for kids, he said he gets cursed at and flipped off.
“Our kids don’t play outside together because parents don’t feel safe,” he said.
He said he’s called the township to try to get some action done based on a traffic study but only got “empty promises.”
Chief Kevin Santucci attended the meeting and said the challenge is that to change speed limits or install speed humps, the transgressions have to reach a certain guideline by law, he said.
“Our number one complaint is traffic,” throughout town, he said. “If I could, I’d put an officer on every corner.”
He asked to get together with residents after the meeting to work on solutions.
