Council takes action on traffic light, road projects

BY LAUREN CIRAULO
Staff Writer

SPOTSWOOD — A long-awaited traffic signal at the Spotswood border has been installed and will soon be recognized by the county.

The Borough Council is poised to adopt an ordinance establishing a traffic light at the intersection of Old Stage Road and Summerhill Road at a Dec. 20 meeting of the governing body.

The county project, which was constructed last spring, is now in its last stage of completion. Council President Curt Stollen said that the ordinance is intended to enforce traffic laws associated with the signal.

“This is a formality. The light was finished up a couple months ago, and the county has asked us to adopt this ordinance so the traffic light can be subject to Spotswood laws,” Stollen said, noting that the borough was required to acquire a small tract of land in order to construct the traffic signal.

Since the traffic signal is located on the border of Spotswood and East Brunswick, East Brunswick officials will be adopting a similar ordinance at their Dec. 20 council meeting.

“People have been seeing the light’s progress in various steps,” Mayor David Stahl said at a Dec. 6 council meeting. “This is the final step. The county wants East Brunswick to establish this ordinance for the traffic signal to become legal.”

The ordinance passed through the first readings at both the Spotswood and East Brunswick council meetings on Dec. 6.

The traffic signal is the latest in a series of improvements to Old Stage Road and the intersection.

A road reconstruction project began in 2009 to widen and repave Old Stage Road from Brunswick Avenue to Crescent Avenue, as well as add sidewalks to the roadway. The borough received a $290,000 state grant for the phase.

The first phase of work on Old Stage Road was done in conjunction with East Brunswick and included repaving work from Summerhill Road to Brunswick Avenue. The work also included the traffic signal at the intersection of Summerhill and Old Stage roads and the widening of both roadways.

Phase two of the project included the addition of sidewalks, as well as repaving, curb repair and the widening of a section of the road near an open-space area at Crescent Avenue and Brunswick Avenue that Middlesex County had purchased. A turn lane was added to accommodate right turns from Old Stage Road onto Brunswick Avenue.

In other business at the Dec. 6 meeting, council members adopted an ordinance providing $55,000 for improvements to the Department of Public Works building.

Also, a $1.4 million ordinance was officially increased to $2.25 million in order to accommodate an additional road in the borough’s extensive road improvement program. The revised bond ordinance now includes the cost of construction for Wyoming Avenue, which has several drainage issues.

The majority of the project will be funded with grants from the state Department of Transportation, Stollen has said.

The improvements to Wyoming Avenue represent only a fraction of the overall bond ordinance. Borough officials began laying the groundwork to revamp a handful of blighted roadways in February when the council authorized its engineering firm, CME Associates, to review the needed work and devise cost estimates for the upgrades. Other roads being revitalized are Ellenel Boulevard, Harris Avenue and the intersection of John Street and Manalapan Road.

In addition to these improvements, the Borough Council passed a resolution authorizing county officials to proceed with a design concept aimed at resolving traffic problems at the intersection of Main Street, DeVoe Avenue and Vliet Street. The plan will see Main Street widened slightly on each side of Vliet Street. For westbound traffic, there will be three lanes approaching the intersection — one for right turns onto Vliet, one for through traffic, and another for left turns onto DeVoe.

Plans also call for reconfiguring the triangle at the intersection of Snowhill Street and Manalapan Road so that right and left turns onto Manalapan will be closer to 90- degree angles.

There will also be some widening on the south side of Manalapan Road near Immaculate Conception School that will allow for two lanes to approach the intersection from the west, easing the sharp curve.