Red light cameras could be up and in use sometime next month at two Rahway intersections: Routes 1&9 and East Milton Avenue, and St. Georges and Maple avenues. There would be a 30-day “warning phase” after installation, to get the public accustomed to them before tickets are issued, according to Police Chief John Rodger. He expects them to be installed at some point next month.
Category Archives: Traffic
Poll: Stop signs go home
Most of you seem to think Irving Street could do without a couple of the stop signs, according to the latest poll:
Summer work: Irving-Central signalization
Work is expected to begin next month to reconfigure the intersection of Central Avenue and Hamilton, Irving and West Main streets.
The project will add a traffic signal to the intersection to coordinate traffic coming from five different directions and address the no-left turn from West Main to Irving streets, according to City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier.
Work also will include creating a triangular traffic island between Hamilton and Central and widening Irving opposite the Union County Arts Center.
City Council on Wednesday night approved a $224,000 contract with Piscataway-based Fai-Gon Electric for signalization.
Two-way traffic, good; Stop signs, bad
Readers are pleased that downtown traffic is going two ways now, but not very happy about all the Stop signs. It seems they’re not nearly as upset as some merchants about the loss of street parking.
More traffic changes afoot
While the Irving-Fulton realignment continues, plans also are in the works for assorted traffic changes around downtown, including:
* Signalization of the five corners intersection near the Union County Arts Center;
* Two-way traffic on Main and Irving streets; and,
* Reversing some one-way streets in the other direction, including West Cherry and Coach streets.
The Fulton-Irving realignment project is expected to last through April, completed around the same time the hotel is planned to be ready.
The City Council earlier this month approved a $114,000 contract for city engineers to develop modifications and signalization for the intersection where Irving, Main and Hamilton streets meet Central Avenue. The project will commence once traffic is converted to two-way on Main and Irving streets, and includes widening Irving Street opposite the arts center, modifying the Civil War monument island at West Main and Central, and constructing a triangular island at Hamilton and Central. City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier said the projects should be completed by July.
Irving-Fulton realignment
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Intersection improvements at Irving Street and East Milton Avenue are expected to begin next month, and wrap up by April, the same time the hotel is scheduled to open. Improvements will include the realignment of Irving and Fulton streets, as well as signalization. The winning bid came in at about $875,000, which the City Council on Monday night officially accepted from Rahway-based Berto Construction.
Citizen justice
I heard this report on NPR the other day detailing how the police department in Naperville, Ill., a suburb about 30 minutes west of Chicago, loans out a radar gun to citizens in one neighborhood, allowing them to track the speed of cars on their streets. They don’t necessarily issue tickets but they do collect information that cops then compile and even send out warnings.
Naperville is substantially bigger than Rahway (Pop. 130,000 v. 27,000), but speeding seems to be an issue in neigborhoods everywhere, particularly in downtowns that aim to attract shoppers/pedestrians. The NPR report reminded me of Rahway’s downtown; Arts District Park would be a perfect spot to set up shop with a radar gun. Making Irving and Main streets two-way likely would slow down traffic some. I remember being at a presentation by Project for Public Spaces several years ago. A fascinating group, they said there are little (read: cheap) things that can be done to slow down traffic, such as making the street appear more narrow to the driver (i.e., painting a shoulder on a wide street). But please, none of those awful “bump-outs,” all they do is eat up parking spaces.
Pedestrian-friendly streets are like parking when it comes to downtowns. Some (Summit, Hoboken) constantly grapple with providing adequate parking because there’s so much traffic. Others that are still rebuilding wish they had that problem, as they try to draw more people and traffic downtown.