BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer
BRICK – Poor circulation may be giving some local planners cold feet when it comes to approving the site plan at a proposed White Castle on Brick Boulevard.
“If it fails, it’s going to fail right on the highway,” said Planning Board traffic engineer Mark W. Kataryniak regarding White Castle’s proposed traffic circulation plan.
The fast food chain is proposing to construct a 2,575-square-foot White Castle on a 28,246-square-foot lot – the site of the former Texaco gas station located next to the Kennedy Mall on the corner of Hooper Avenue and Brick Boulevard.
Approximately 60 percent of the chain’s 24-hour operation will be drive-through business, said White Castle regional director Harry M. Jensen Jr. at the April 19 board meeting.
White Castle had failed to provide a traffic report to the board at its April 12 meeting.
The board held a special meeting April 19 to address traffic circulation concerns and to hear the planner’s testimony.
The applicant’s traffic engineer, Robert A. Nelson, of Nelson Engineering Associates Inc., Wanamassa, provided testimony defending the site’s traffic circulation design.
The traffic circulation plan proposes to allow up to eight cars in the drive-through lane at any given time.
A White Castle order takes about three minutes to fill, Nelson said.
A customer arriving to find eight cars in the drive-through lane would park and place their order inside instead of waiting 24 minutes at the drive-through, he said.
One of Kataryniak’s concerns was the 10-foot-wide drive-through and bypass lanes he said were not wide enough for vehicles to negotiate through the site.
“Wider lanes would open up circulation around the building,” Kataryniak said.
To widen the lanes, the White Castle would have to be redesigned.
“That can’t be done,” Nelson said. “The building is architecturally complete.”
Service times provided by White Castle based on stores in Eatontown and Elizabeth show that an average of 60 trips occur during White Castle’s peak hours of business.
The “peak hour” is sustained for up to 10 hours, Kataryniak said.
“There are sustained volumes from 12 noon till 11 p.m.,” he said. “With the extended peak, that’s when you get residual backup traffic queues on-site. My concern is that should that drive-through [design] fail, additional vehicles, once they wrap around the aisle, that wrap around will result in blocking traffic coming in the site or going around the site. You don’t have a lot of distance before you affect Brick Boulevard.”
The proposed site plan has traffic entering the site through a driveway approximately 25 feet north of the Kennedy Mall driveway on Brick Boulevard, Nelson said.
Traffic would circulate counterclockwise through the site and exit at the start of the right turn lane for Hooper Avenue.
Planners also expressed concern that some drivers would attempt to exit the site in the right turn lane and maneuver through five lanes of traffic in an attempt to make a left-hand turn onto Chambers Bridge Road.
“Traffic itself controls the use of the driveway,” said Nelson, a former Brick resident. “I don’t think people are going to take that chance.”
“The Brick Township driver will take the path of least resistance wherever he can,” said board president Daniel Kelly.
Kataryniak called that area of Brick the “Bermuda Triangle” when it comes to traffic.
“We have to improve the situation where we can and take a hard look at these driveways,” he said.
Listed as active on the state Department of Environmental Protection’s known contaminated site list, Township Land Use and Planning Director Michael P. Fowler said the applicant agreed to submit documents verifying the site has been remediated.
Reaching somewhat of a stalemate regarding the site’s traffic circulation design, Kataryniak and Nelson agreed to meet in the weeks leading up to the board’s May 3 workshop meeting, where the engineers’ conclusions will be presented to the board.