Planning Board Raises Feasibility and Public Safety Concerns with Landmark Traffic Findings

Concerned that the traffic impact study conducted to identify and mitigate traffic flow concerns associated with the did not adequately address various public safety concerns, members peppered Landmark’s traffic engineer Eric Keller with questions for well over an hour at Monday’s public hearing.

The study, which modeled future traffic growth associated with the controversial Landmark development using industry standard software, looked at traffic impacts at four intersections adjacent to the site: 

• Fair Lawn Avenue and Plaza Road
• Plaza Road and Ramsey Terrace
• Plaza Road and Ramapo Terrace
• Plaza Road and Berdan Avenue

Landmark’s traffic engineers installed an automatic traffic recorder across Plaza Road last September that took readings from Sept. 26 through Oct. 6, and compared them to a previous traffic recording taken on March 29, 2006.

Traffic Study Assumptions 

Even though some Landmark development dwellers will likely make use of nearby public transportation options – the Radburn train station and two bus routes run past the site – calculations performed to predict the site’s effect on traffic generation conservatively assumed an insignificant level of public transportation.

For that reason, Keller said he expected the traffic growth attributable to the development would actually be lower than the study indicates, since in reality not all of its residents would be commuting via car and clogging the streets.

Additionally, the 2011 traffic counts taken by Landmark showed a decline in traffic along Plaza Road since the time the original traffic count was taken in 2006. While Keller said he expected the decline -- given his experience studying recent traffic patterns at other locations across northern New Jersey -- his team used the higher 2006 traffic counts as the baseline for future traffic predictions to be conservative.

Several board members opined that the 2011 traffic counts were flawed and attributed the traffic decrease seen in the study to the study's overlap with the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. 

"[The count] really isn’t the result of there being less vehicle usage, but more the result of less people traveling to work or going to their place of work by walking," Planning Board vice chairman Brent Pohlman said.

While the data is not being used to make the traffic calculations anwyays, Keller said he didn’t believe it was flawed and asserted that any traffic counts generated on Jewish holidays were discounted.

Traffic Study Findings 

Plaza Road traffic counts showed that the peak commuter hour – when traffic volume is the highest – occurs each morning from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and each evening from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. 

Keller said that based on Landmark’s proposed 165 residential units, the morning peak hour would generate 77 trips – 64 outbound, 13 inbound – and the evening peak hour would generate 91 trips – 30 outbound, 61 inbound.

Those traffic volumes were then assigned to the various surrounding intersections based on traffic flow patterns that exist today.

“The traffic generated by this project represents a 2 percent increase over the existing volumes that we see on the roads today,” said Keller, who explained that because traffic flow generally varies by about 5 percent from one day to the next, the amount of additional traffic generated by the Landmark development would fall within the range of normal traffic variability.

“It’s a small amount of traffic,” he said.

Having established the road’s peak hours and the number of new trips the development would be expected to generate if built today, Keller then projected ahead three years to 2014, the estimated year the development would actually be built.

Keller again said he took a conservative approach with his projections, assuming a 2 percent growth factor per year even though his team’s own studies showed that traffic volumes were on the decline.

He said his group's projections also factored in the increased traffic expected from the construction of the Fair Lawn Promenade, a mixed-use development currently being built along Route 208.

With the expected traffic increases calculated and assigned deliberately to neighboring intersections, each intersection was then given a service level grade from "A" to "F" based on the average delay in seconds one would experience when taking that approach.

“All of [the intersections] show acceptable operating levels of service, except for the northbound Plaza Road left at Berdan Avenue,” said Keller, who indicated that the Landmark development would cause the approach’s level of service to drop slightly to a grade "F."

Traffic Study Solutions

Plaza Road at Berdan Avenue

To improve the overall operation of the northbound approach at Plaza Road and Berdan Avenue, Keller recommended adjusting the amount of green time at the intersection. 

“By adjusting the green time at that intersection,” Keller said, “The northbound left gets better, some of the other approaches get slightly worse, but there’s still a level of service D or better, which is generally considered an acceptable level of service within the system that we’re working with here.”

Board chairman Peter Kortright expressed skepticism that a simple tinkering of the timing would be possible given the age of the intersection’s traffic signal.

“Just from a mechanical standpoint, you have not been in that box, you don’t know what’s in that box. You can open that box and it’ll probably collapse,” he said. “It’s a very old signal.”

Keller acknowledged the age of the signal but said he felt that a slight adjustment to the signal’s timing was an appropriate mitigative measure.

Kortright disagreed, and asked Keller to take another look at the measure’s feasibility.

“It’s a very old box so this slight adjustment may not pan out,” he said. “It might require a little more than that.”

Rather than adjusting the signal’s timing, board members suggested a variety of other alternatives ranging from adding a left-hand turn arrow to an advanced green to a delayed green at the intersection. Keller agreed to model each alternative -- for drivers traveling both northbound and southbound through the intersection -- and present his findings at the board’s next public hearing.

Plaza Road at Ramsey Terrace

Perhaps the most contentious sticking point at Monday's hearing was Landmark's decision to add a stop sign with a crosswalk rather than a traffic light where Ramsey Terrace intersects with Plaza Road -- a location that will serve as one of the two proposed entrances to the Landmark development.

Multiple board members expressed concerns that without a traffic light at that intersection, the safety of crossing pedestrians would be seriously jeopardized.

“You cannot tell me that it’s safe to cross Ramsey at Plaza Road,” planning board member Todd Malkin said. “You have a bad curve and people speeding there. The solution would be a light.”

Keller explained that the intersection did not meet the necessary traffic signal warrants, which are the criteria that must be met for the installation of a traffic signal.

"I’m not implying in any way that whether it's one person or 100 people that it makes it any better," Keller said. "It’s the warrants and these are the thresholds that have to be satisfied."

Unsatisfied, Malkin encouraged Keller to consider the pedestrian impact of the nearby bus stops and the children who walk to school in the area.

“Forget books," he said. "Reality is, you have people crossing Plaza Road at that intersection...You need a light there, you need to slow down traffic.”

Conceding that the installation of a light may not be possible, Kortright asked Keller whether engineers had studied the sight lines for pedestrians crossing Ramsey Terrace, given that a crosswalk had been proposed for the intersection.

"The speed limits are 40-plus," Kortright said. "Have you looked at that analysis in terms of cars coming around the turn?"

When Keller responded that he had not looked at the sight visibility in detail, Kortright said he felt that was unacceptable.

"If you’re providing a crosswalk without the safety angle, what’s the point of providing a crosswalk?" he asked. "It just doesn’t make any sense. It's contingent upon the developer to provide the safety component here."

Pohlman, who said he would prefer a traffic signal to a crosswalk, said that if the traffic warrants prohibited the installation of a signal, he'd like the developers to consider adding lighted tracks across the crosswalk.

Keller said he knew of the availability of the technology -- whereby a pedestrian pushes a button to create flashing lights in the crosswalk -- but said he was not familiar with requirements for its installation.

At Pohlman's request, Keller agreed to research the standards and report back to the board at its next hearing.

Plaza Road and other side streets

Planning Board member Joseph Mele asked why the developer's study had not considered any Plaza Road cross streets besides Ramsey and Ramapo terraces, when a side street like Warren Road was, in his opinion, more heavily traveled by locals.

Keller said that because their study showed little impact on traffic at any of the other intersections, it was not expected to make a difference at Warren Road. 

"When you look at the traffic flows on the other side streets, the incremental impact has been slight and I would expect it would be the same at Warren Road," he said. "Whatever the level of service on Warren Road is today, the handful of cars that we’re adding to Plaza Road is not going to materially affect the level of service at Warren Road beyond what it is today."

The Planning Board's next hearing on the Landmark development will be held Monday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.

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