Speeding Concerns Raised At Morristown Council Meeting

MORRISTOWN, NJ — Two local residents expressed concern about excessive speeding on Grant Street and asked the town to install digital radar speed limit signs and speed bumps, among other preventative measures.

John Madden, a teacher at Morristown High School, was the first to address the council. He expressed concern about the high rate of speeding on Grant Street, which is frequently used by students walking to and from school during the day.

"Right now there is no signage at all indicating what the speed should be on Grant Street, and I would say that for all of the surrounding areas. There are no speed signs on Columba, Cleveland, Harrison on Early, nowhere in that neighborhood is there a speed sign," Madden said.

While there is currently a speed indicator sign on 9 Grant Street, it does not provide a speed limit, according to Madden. "In my opinion, based on streets just like it that have speed bumps it should be somewhere between 15 and 20 miles an hour," Madden said.

"Students being released from high school come speeding down that road. It's not everyone. I want to point that out. It's not everyone, but enough that at some point somebody is going to be killed or injured," Madden said.

Madden expressed additional concern, stating that more than half of the residents in the area, including himself, have small children who regularly walk and play in the neighborhood.

"Whatever the solution is, the speeding on that street needs to be regulated," Madden said.

Denville resident John Jones expressed his concerns as well, suggesting that speed bumps could help solve the problem. “Those young kids from the high school, they fly up and down the street, and they don’t care," said Jones.

Jones also recommended placing a police officer on Grant Street to monitor speeding. "Doing nothing, they're going to kill somebody and it's going to be too late, it's going to be somebody's kid," Jones said.

"The fact that we don't have speed signs is kind of surprising," Mayor Tim Dougherty said.

In response, the council stated that the road did not meet speed requirements during a traffic study in 2018, but that it will perform speed counts in the near future.