Doctor Quizzes Overpasses Logic

COURT HOUSE — Many motorists believe overpasses at Interchanges 9, 10 and 11 on Garden State Parkway cannot happen soon enough. One local physician believes there are other ways that might be better and less costly.
He has detailed his concerns in three separate letters to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) as part of the CAFRA (Coastal Area Facilities Review Act) permit. It’s but one of several permits needed for the project to advance.
Long a political point of debate, due to numerous accidents, some of which claimed lives at those intersections, the overpasses would eliminate traffic signals and grade crossings at Shellbay Avenue, Mayville, Stone Harbor Boulevard, Court House, and Crest Haven Road, Swainton.
Russell Down, 79, is a medical doctor and general practitioner who has practiced for 49 years. He lives on Holmes Landing Road, which would be impacted by an access road from Stone Harbor Boulevard, according to draft designs for the overpasses.
Down’s July 10 letter to DEP Division of Land Use Regulation, spells out his concerns of “current crossroads entrances and exits.” He noted they are addressed in his June 23 letter.
“After all these years, simple intersection improvements remain undone,” he wrote. For instance, where three lanes of Parkway traffic are often moving south fast past the Stone Harbor Blvd. and Shellbay Road lights, drivers of vehicles eastbound on those crossroads turning south onto the Parkway don’t always notice the yield signs, and thinking they are entering merge lanes as on interstates, intrude into oncoming traffic.”
He acknowledges that is but a small part of the “picture.”
The same is true for westbound traffic at those roads, he wrote. “This is disruptive to Parkway right lane through traffic at all six places, and dangerous to all, relative to the entrance ramp configuration of highways such as interstates and NJ Route 55…”
Down mentions the east end of Mechanic Street where there are relatively short (200 feet, he wrote) entrance and exit lanes. While he agrees that they are “helpful,” “It creates a human engineering problem, in that if one is not mindful of the difference, and is accustomed to the Mechanic Street entry despite merge signs, “a lapse into 50 mph oncoming Parkway flow is more likely.”
Creation of merge lanes at all six points, Down wrote, “could have been applied any time for the last 50 years.”
“Accidents at these three crossroads have been cited as indications for the overpasses,” he continued.
He wondered, too, if any study had been done “to determine how many might not have happened if these entry and exit lanes had existed?”
“Putting them in now instead of overpasses might save just as many lives,” Down wrote.
While many believe the overpasses will cure all problems, Down questioned how many woes they would create, including wetland mitigation (creating wetlands to compensate for destroyed wetlands).
“Compared with post overpass dynamics, it would result in more functional local traffic situation…Alternate pathways for travel in Middle Township are now diminished because of 50 years of easy Parkway access,” Down wrote.
Timing and justification of the project was also raised by Down.
He cited 2030 when peak traffic load could be expected. Down wrote “That date lies about 20 years past ‘peak oil’ by which time a very different reality than now predictable will probably manifest.
“Increase fuel costs and decreasing supplies by then will have impacted private vehicle tourist traffic, and hopefully more efficient public transportation will exist,” he wrote.
That use of rails in the future made Down wonder about the proposal “for mitigating salt water wetlands loss due to this project include the return to wetlands of part of the old railroad causeway from the mainland to the Wildwoods.
“Another mitigation site which was proposed for this project would have eliminated an aquaculture facility (theme ‘Driving Into Famine.’) One might wonder if we are even mitigating in the right direction,” he wrote.
Funding, ever the question when it comes to such massive projects, was also questioned by Down, “The more we spend on roads, the less there is for public transit.”
In this July 6 letter, Down questioned a proposed “infiltration basin” that is to be 175 feet in length at the north end of the on-ramp northbound near Crest Haven.
“What provisions are to be made for insect control in each of these two areas, who will be doing it, with what chemicals, and at what anticipated annual cost?”
In the same vicinity, between Moore Road and the parkway’s northbound lane, he noted a “locked wetland.” He questioned the habitat for that wetland, and again asked about insect control.
The east-side access road from Stone Harbor Boulevard to Holmes Landing Road should be built prior to the rest of the project, Down noted, “to minimize glitches in travel during the main project.”
Down further questioned where the gravel for the project would originate? He said there are numerous gravel pits that dot the landscape that potentially harm the aquifer.
“How will transport of this material impact area roadbeds? How will it affect traffic at a time when project construction also affects it?
“Nothing I came across in the complete permit application package at the (Middle Township) Municipal Clerk’s Office touches upon this issue. Certainly it is relevant to these applications,” Down wrote.