Freeholders Hear Delegation’s Concern of Speeding on Shunpike

CREST HAVEN — Some 30 residents, who live on or near Shunpike Road in Court House, near a lethal intersection of Oyster Road with Shunpike, presented a petition to freeholders on Tue., Nov. 9 seeking a traffic signal and lowered speed limit.
The delegation, spearheaded by Daniel Mihal, whose wife, Marcy, and young daughter were in an Oct. 21 accident at the intersection, was united in its demand. Many of those who attended had previously voiced their concerns to Middle Township Committee on Nov. 1. The governing body told them Shunpike Road was a county road, and therefore, freeholders had jurisdiction.
Their plight was well received by freeholders, including Gerald Thornton, who told the group he was passed on the road by a motorcycle that “must have been doing 80” last summer.
The board passed a resolution for consulting engineers at the meeting.
County Engineer Dale Foster said he has spoken to one, and that a package would be mailed to that firm Wed., Nov. 10 “with your petition.” He said the county was “doing speed surveys” of the stretch of road. Foster said the county Road Department and Middle Township officials were “working together clearing the site lines” of the intersection.
Foster said he hoped some “preliminary indications” could take place before year’s end of “what we can do.”
Speed limit on the road is 50 mph. Residents advised it should be lowered to 40 or 35 mph.
Enforcement is the key, noted Vice Director Ralph Sheets, former Wildwood police chief.
Middle Township police have had a marked patrol car south of the intersection as well as flashing signs admonishing drivers to slow down and observe speed limits.
Owners of northwest and southwestern corners of the intersection had given the county preliminary approvals to clear the vegetation that hinders drivers from seeing oncoming traffic.
Foster said that site triangle across the road from there meets site triangle requirements. There is a utility pole there, he said, “You can stop shy of it or creep beyond it, but there is nothing we can do with the utility police.”
Middle Township Administrator Mark Mallett represented the governing body, and thanked the board and Foster for quickly addressing the concerns and issues of the residents.
“As soon as I contacted Dale Foster about it, he moved very quickly,” said Mallett extending thanks for that work.
While residents called for greater traffic enforcement, Mallett noted that Chief of Police Christopher Leusner had heightened enforcement along Route 47. “We have a lot of ground to cover with the resources we have,” said Mallett. He noted the chief would “Devote more resources to Shunpike.”
A sympathetic Thornton replied, “This is a good example for the public to recognize throughout Cape May County we are seeing reduction in law enforcement agencies. They are being reduced over and over again. This is what it does. It stresses those agencies taking care of these situations. There’s got to be a happy medium somewhere.”
Among those losses are “seven or nine in Lower Township, and Middle is down four officers,” said Thornton. Mallett said the township was “down four officers over the past two years and two more are retiring this year.”
Betty Shockley, of Shunpike Road, told the board the latest movement to lower speed was something she had written to the county about “approximately two years ago.” She said that letter was addressed to the board and Foster. She noted instances where a police car passed a school bus, which was stopped and had its flashing lights on to pick up her grandson.
“I was screaming and hollering,” said Shockley, “he was on his way to an emergency, but the sign’s out, it means stop,” she said. As a result, Shockley told the board she had asked the school bus driver to pick up and drop off her grandson on their side of the road, so that he would not have to cross Shunpike.
Caryn Rixey, whose son Kevin Lamb died in a crash last year near the Oyster Road intersection, said police told her excessive ponding of water at the intersection might have been a contributing factor that “caused him to go across the intersection.”
She added that speed reduction is a necessity on the road. She said there had been “at least five fatalities” near or within 500 feet of the intersection.