HOWELL – A traffic engineer has offered details relating to an applicant’s plan to demolish an abandoned gas station on Route 9 in Howell and to construct a new gas station and a convenience store.
The application from Gill Petroleum resumed at the Oct. 3 meeting of the Howell Planning Board. Representatives of the applicant said the proposed convenience store has been reduced from 3,000 square feet to 2,700 square feet.
The property that is the subject of the application is near The Villages adult community on Wyckoff Mills Road and Woolley’s Fish Market and Seafood House on Route 9. The site is bordered by Route 9 and by Wyckoff Mills Road.
Attorney Salvatore Alfieri and traffic engineer John Rea represented Gill Petroleum at the meeting.
Plans call for the removal of the existing site improvements and the construction of a BP gas station and a 2,700-square-foot convenience store. Three new 15,000-gallon underground fuel storage tanks would be installed at the site, according to previous testimony.
Plans for the new gas station and convenience store show access from Route 9 and from Wyckoff Mills Road, parking spaces for 17 vehicles, a loading area, an enclosed area for trash, an infiltration basin, landscaping, lighting and signs.
Rea prepared a traffic report for the site and said the impact analysis was dated March 7, 2019.
“We conducted a.m. and p.m. peak street hour traffic counts across the Route 9 frontage and the Wyckoff Mills Road frontage of the property. We conducted a trip generation analysis for the convenience store with gas pumps based on the latest edition of the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generations Manual,” Rea said.
Vehicles leaving the site on Route 9 may only turn right onto the highway and vehicles leaving the site on Wyckoff Mills Road may only turn left onto that street, he said.
“The site has previously been used as a gas station. Our analysis of the site driveway shows that the right turn exit onto Route 9 will operate at a C level of service (on a scale of A to F) during the a.m. and p.m. peak street hours. The left turn onto Wyckoff Mills Road will operate at a B level of service during the morning and afternoon peak hours,” Rea said.
He said both driveways would operate well within acceptable traffic engineering parameters.
Rea said he has researched the number of people who enter this type of facilities and only purchase gas, only purchase from the convenience store and those who purchase both.
“The way it generally breaks down, and these are approximate numbers, is that about 50% of the traffic entering the site makes a gasoline purchase only, 25% makes a gas purchase and a convenience store purchase, and the remaining 25% makes a convenience store purchase only,” Rea said.
The applicant is projecting about 100 customers during peak hours. Rea said that is probably on the high end of the projection based on similar sites nearby.
He explained that the parking that will be provided for the store will be sufficient to accommodate the projected number of customers.
During public comment, John Woolley, who owns the neighboring Woolley’s Fish Market and Restaurant, asked about a deceleration lane on Route 9 north.
“Apparently this (new) building is proposed to shut off most of my visibility and landscaping is going to come in, (plus) a digital sign. I am wondering how we could accommodate people looking for my building now,” Woolley said.
Rea said the shoulder would serve as a deceleration lane for vehicles entering businesses on the highway.
“I do not see the (New Jersey Department of Transportation) doing much more than what they have already done on this section of Route 9 … Typically you have a full-width shoulder and that is used for deceleration,” he said.
Alfieri said the applicant would be willing to meet with Woolley to discuss the issues the business owner raised.
Woolley said in some instances, truck drivers have parked in the Route 9 shoulder and entered his business.
Howell Police Chief Andrew Kudrick, who sits on the board, said parking in the shoulder is an offense that could result in a driver being issued a ticket.
The Gill Petroleum application was carried to the board’s Dec. 19 meeting.