South Finley Residents Don't Want Preferred Ridge Traffic Option

Stressing that no final decision has been made, or engineering plans worked out, members of the Bernards Board of Education at Thursday's meeting expressed tentative support for a plan of installing a new driveway off South Finley Avenue to improve and make safer the traffic flow at Ridge High School.

The proposals were unveiled at a Monday night meeting to seek input from the public. All of the options and consultant reports also can be found online.

On Thursday night, following a budget hearing and adoption, Bernards Schools Superintendent Nick Markarian again outlined the different options in the report drawn up by the task force, and explained why some were considered by task force members to be more acceptable than others.

During months of meetings, the task force developed a baker's dozen of different options, including a $1.1 million plan to construct a new entrance off Collyer Lane.

At Thursday's meeting, several of the school board members said they are leaning toward option nine, at a cost of just under $150,000. Even so, Markarian cautioned during his presentation, "We are trying to solve a problem that doesn't really have an ideal solution."

However, the option of installing a new driveway just north and parallel to the existing driveway by the Bernards Township Health Department building that would be an enter right-turn only, and exit right-turn only, and would have buses and students who are parking for the day heading directly to the parking lots C and D behind the high schools. Parents would drop off in front of the building, or behind the new gym in lot A.

School officials said the design would achieve the goal of completely separating bus from parent drop-off traffic. Markarian began his presentation by saying that the goal of the task force was to improve safety on campus and get high school buses, now dropping off Ridge students at the Cedar Hill School, out of that neighborhood, rather than solving off-campus traffic problems.

That preference didn't sit well with neighbors along South Finley, who said that a series of new driveways heading into the complex haven't solved Ridge's decades-old morning traffic issues.

"I know there is no perfect solution," said South Finley resident Eileen Walsh, a direct neighbor of the high school who had some of her property used for an earlier parking expansion.

But she said that residents had been told that previous projects would solve Ridge's traffic snarls, including the alignment of the intersection at Lake Road and construction of back parking lots which she said were supposedly not to be used for student parking.

Option nine "just reshuffles the congestion on South Finley," she said.

South Finley resident Bill Connors said that the part of the proposal that includes closing off the driveway already along the health department's property — which allows right-turn access for vehicles that have already dropped off students in the traffic loop — will add about another 140 cars backed up and waiting to exit at the main entrance at the intersection of Lake Road and South Finley Avenue.

Connors said the task force — with members of the school board, Bernards Township Committee and other township and school officials — failed to adequately recognize the benefits of using the access road from the municipal complex for a back entrance to the high school in mornings.

Connors said the school administrators last year rerouted buses along the public streets of Homestead Village to drop off high school students at the Cedar Hill Elementary School, which has a rear walkway to Ridge.

Connors said he feels most residents favor use of municipal building for a solution. He said school officials should "not take no for an answer" when township officials say they will not allow an access road from the rear of the municipal complex, by a cell tower, to be used for at least part-time entry to the rear parking lots of the school.

"It's town property, it's a town solution," Connors said.

Board President Susan McGowan said that school officials don't have jurisdiction over municipal property.

She added that a big part of the Township Committee's objections is Police Chief Brian Bobowicz to have traffic blocking the municipal complex, which could impede police vehicles from leaving to reach an emergency.

Concerns about moving traffic to Collyer Lane in the morning also have been raised during previous discussions.

Mayor Carolyn Gaziano has previously said that the stone entrance at the property would be too narrow for school buses, and would not even allow two school buses to pass in opposite directions at the same time.

But School Board Member Michael Byrne said he believes that that the need to be able to respond to an emergency is a reason in favor of developing a gravel access road between the police station and high school.

Byrne said thousands of people are in the high school, and noted that the Newtown massacre took place within five minutes. He said that the one exit and entrance to the municipal complex, which includes the police station, could in theory be blocked by a large vehicle to keep police from responding.

Byrne also noted that a traffic study commissioned by the Board of Education last spring resulted in the conclusion that access, even one way, from the municipal complex, was the easiest and most economical solution.

Board member Bev Cwerner said earlier in the meeting that she believes option nine is a "reasonable solution" given the parameters of the task force, which included township officials. Nevertheless, she said she was glad that Byrne had spoken up.

McGowan said option nine is not a formal recommendation. Nevertheless, she said that it was the only solution on which task force members were able to obtain some consensus.

Cwerner and other board members, including Priti Shah, said they believe the problem involves the town and school, not only the school.

"If you don't take care of Finley, I believe all of this [car] traffic is going to Cedar Hill," Shah said.

Board Member William Koch, who serves on the traffic task force along with Markarian and McGowan, said the task force is scheduled to meet again next Wednesday to address input on the proposed options.