Safety fixes don't have to be costly

Sunday, September 19, 2010
By JOHN CICHOWSKI
ROAD WARRIOR COLUMNIST

If you want a cheap, nasty thrill, take NJ Transit's Bergen Line to the Fair Lawn stop and skip down the steps to Broadway, where commuters risk their lives crossing a four-lane section of Route 4 to reach a parking lot.

Carl Orrico calls the Broadway crossing a "walk of death … akin to darting across a minefield. Hold your breath, say a small prayer, and run across, hoping cars will slow down. They rarely do. Horn-honking and speeding up are more common. At night, it can be insanely dangerous."

No one has been killed there – at least not yet — but the Elmwood Park reader has a point. New Jersey drivers seem genetically disinclined to slow down and stop for pedestrians despite a new law that requires this (ahem) inconvenience. On Broadway westbound, this failing is exacerbated by a downward grade before the crossing. Cars tend to speed up there instead of slowing down despite pedestrian crossing signs.

Add this dangerous site to a long list of overdue projects that rarely reach the radar of the state Department of Transportation, whose roads and bridges are in dire need of help. A pedestrian footbridge — Carl's suggestion — would likely solve the problem but installing it, as well as the necessary stairs and wheelchair ramps could cost a couple of million bucks.

Still, the Broadway example shows how a subtler, more cost-effective brand of safety improvements can be made despite a recession, if businesses and towns join forces.

This fall, DOT is expected to install flashing, strobe-light beacons to light up the crosswalk signs under a plan initiated by the Fair Lawn Broadway Improvement Corp. The plan also calls for bump-outs at the crossing to reduce curb-to-curb walking distance.

Eventually, the BIC, a collection of businesses along the strip, even hopes to get DOT to replace the unattractive Jersey barriers that separate Broadway's eastbound and westbound lanes.

"There are plenty of modern ways to make highway dividers look more attractive," said BIC consultant Mark Gordon.

These improvements are similar to practical, nearly imperceptible changes being made along a commercial artery with dozens of traffic lights and 250 stores and businesses. NJ Transit, for example, replaced a passenger shelter and added benches, signs and other amenities at the rail station.

Last spring, DOT installed big overhead signs saying "Route 4 West Broadway District Paterson" at the highway's Paramus-Fair Lawn border. Next month, the BID will install signs saying "Welcome to the Broadway District."

Most important so far, DOT and both borough councils reduced the speed limit on the highway for about a mile in both directions at the rail crossing.

So far, this work has taken nearly two years. Such projects may seem simple, but they're not. Anecdotal evidence documenting near-misses wasn't enough to lower the speed limit. Radar studies had to be conducted.

Road projects, it seems, always take longer than expected.

In the town of Hawthorne last week, nine families on Brockhuizen Lane, the most pothole-ridden street in both Bergen and Passaic counties, were surprised to see workers digging up their hilly dirt road. A decade ago, they asked Hawthorne to pave the street, which was owned — not by the borough — but by a nearby private development.

The council refused, even though emergency vehicles couldn't scale the hill. Lawyers were hired, and finally a compromise was arranged. The road was to be paved in spring, then summer. It's getting done in fall.

But the grandpa of all delayed road jobs must be Interstate 95, which stretches almost 2,000 miles from Maine to Florida — except for a gap in Lawrenceville just outside Trenton, where most northbound road warriors take the circuitous I-295 and I-195 and a part of the New Jersey Turnpike marked I-95.

Six decades later, the missing link will be completed in a federally funded $1.4 billion project undertaken by our state's DOT and the Pennsylvania Turnpike. In New Jersey, I-195 and I-295 will be restriped and renamed; in Pennsylvania, an interchange will be built where I-95 crosses the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Why the lengthy delay?

Put most of the blame on the New Jersey Turnpike, which preceded the federal interstate system. It didn't make much sense to duplicate the turnpike's route, especially since its specifications exceeded federal specs. But with today's expanded highway travel, there's never enough pavement to get us all where we have to go.

Road Warrior runs Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail cichowski@ northjersey.com. Blog: http://blogs. northjersey.com/blogs/roadwarrior