creating traffic woes
Brookdale expansion cited as big factor in
creating traffic woes
BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer
TINTON FALLS — The idea is as crazy as the traffic it is supposed to alleviate.
That is exactly what Tinton Falls officials had to say about Middletown’s decision to ask Monmouth County to study the feasibility of creating a Garden State Parkway Exit 107 off Tinton Avenue.
"They’re crazy," Tinton Falls Borough Administrator Anthony Muscillo said last week. "We’ve heard this before. We have met with officials and residents from Middletown before about this and told them it was just not realistic. We have two Tinton Falls exits off the parkway. We don’t need another."
Middletown officials view their action as simply addressing a problem their residents face.
The council decided to make its support for a new exit official after resident Walter Horan said such projects must begin with a decision to study the concept from the Monmouth County Engineer’s Office. The engineer’s office must then express its support for such a project to the state Highway Authority, which ultimately decides whether such an idea is feasible.
"Maybe if we pass a resolution letting the county know we support it and why, and asking them to study the idea, that will be the impetus they need," Mayor Rosemarie Peters said at the Nov. 17 meeting where the council asked its attorney, Bernard Reilly, to draw up the resolution.
"There is an ever-increasing volume of traffic in Lincroft [on Swimming River Road]," Horan told the committee. "The idea of creating an interchange, with a northbound entrance and southbound exit on Tinton Avenue in Tinton Falls, needs to be studied."
Swimming River Road becomes Tinton Avenue as it runs into Tinton Falls. The road veers left over a parkway overpass near Monmouth Regional High School and the Tinton Falls town hall and police station. The exit Horan wants to see built would have a north exit near the school and a south exit farther down the road.
"It may take more traffic off Swimming River Road and Newman Springs Road, which are just off Exit 109, but it would just dump more traffic right onto an already congested area here, near the municipal complex, the high school and another parkway exit," Muscillo said.
Explaining his support for a new exit between exits 105 and 109, Middletown Committeeman Raymond O’Grady said, "An Exit 107 would take hundreds of cars a day off that road [Swimming River Road]."
Swimming River Road resident Barbara Thorpe asked at the Middletown meeting that the resolution include a request to stop new construction at Brookdale Community College, which is near Swimming River Road.
"Every day they add another building, several thousands of students are added, and traffic increases," Thorpe said. "The infrastructure to support the added traffic from Brookdale’s expansion just isn’t there."
"I agree with her on that," Muscillo said. "Brookdale brings most of that traffic in as it is. Expansion of Brookdale needs to stop until some remedy to the traffic congestion it generates is devised.
"The main roads around the college are county roads," the borough administrator continued. "There’s Swimming River (which runs into Tinton Falls and turns into Tinton Avenue) and there’s Newman Springs Road (Route 520) which is right off parkway Exit 109. A new exit in Tinton Falls may take more traffic off those roads, but it would just dump it all right here in front of the town hall and school. It’s not a good idea. Working out a solution with Brookdale is a better thought."