METUCHEN – Metuchen has been awarded a $60,000 state grant to pay for a traffic circulation study.
“We want to make sure the money we get [in the future] is used in the best way to improve the traffic situation in Metuchen,” said Mayor Thomas Vahalla in a telephone interview with the Sentinel. “I’m hoping the study also will show we need more trains, shuttles, and other forms of public transportation like car pools.”
Metuchen’s goal in commissioning a traffic circulation study is to determine how to best use money provided by Renaissance Properties Inc., which will develop a 5.85-acre, $71 million retail and residential property at Middlesex and Lake avenues. The study, called the Circulation Plan Element (of the borough’s METUCHEN master plan) will examine foot, automobile, train and bus traffic in town-center situations like the one that will be created with the development.
Board approval, Renaissance Properties agreed to provide Metuchen with $700,000 to put toward traffic improvements, said William E. Boerth, borough administrator, as he read from Planning Board records in a telephone interview with the Sentinel.
Without the grant, Vahalla said, the borough would end up spending some of that surplus to examine how to spend the money, rather than ameliorating the borough’s traffic congestion. The study will consider the town’s intersections, whether synchronizing traffic lights would cut down on traffic congestion, the number of vehicles that are on the roads, and other variables.
The Smart Future Grant, one of three announced July 18 by District 18 legislators Sen. Barbara Buono and Assemblymen Patrick Diegnan and Peter Barnes III (all Democrats), is awarded by the state’s Community Affairs Department of Smart Growth to municipalities, counties and nonprofit agencies to balance development with environmental preservation.
“Maintaining a balance between preservation and development is an important precedent to set for the future generations,” Barnes said in a statement announcing the grant.
Vahalla had planned to formally announce the Smart Future Grant award at the borough council meeting scheduled for July 21.
“It is extremely important that we plan for the future of our state by investing in mass transit, METUCHEN preserving our environmental resources, and developing our towns responsibly,” Buono said in the same statement. “These grants help to ensure that we provide future generations with a state that has been carefully planned to support the development of cities and the preservation of open space and resources.”
“Implementing the principles of Smart Growth planning [is] essential for a healthy New Jersey now and in the future,” Diegnan said in a statement. “These projects will help ensure that New Jersey’s development and open space will both be considered as we move toward the future.”
District officials also awarded $50,000 to the Diocese of Metuchen’s Catholic Charities to produce a plan to upgrade the Remsen Avenue commercial center of the Unity Square Neighborhood in the city of New Brunswick.