Harvey Road speed limit may be reduced by 10 mph
U.F. has performed traffic study, must wait for state's OK
BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer

UPPER FREEHOLD - Township officials discussed lowering the speed limit on Harvey Road to 40 mph at their July 19 meeting.

David Meirs III, the owner of Concord Stud Farm on Harvey Road in Cream Ridge, had complained about motorists using excessive speed while his employees cross horses from fields on one side of the ride to the other.

Harvey Road is under municipal jurisdiction and measures approximately one mile from Burlington Path Road on its northern boundary to Davis Station Road on its southern boundary, according to Nicholas Verderese, of Schoor DePalma, which is the township's engineer.

According to Verderese, Harvey Road is generally 24 feet wide, has no shoulders or curb and narrows to 16 feet wide at a bridge crossing.

"The vertical alignment is rolling, and the horizontal alignment is generally straight," Verderese told the governing body in a letter dated July 11.

In the letter, Verderese noted there are signs on the road about driving 25 mph when a horse and rider are present but that there are no other speed-limit signs posted. The current speed limit for the road is 50 mph, he said.

The makeup of the road does not qualify it for a 25-mph or 35-mph speed limit, according to Verderese.

Verderese said that the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways recommends that a speed limit for any given road be within 5 mph of the 85th-percentile speed of free-flowing traffic on that road. In order to determine existing speeds along Harvey Road, Verderese said an automatic traffic recorder was placed on the road from May 23 to May 31.

The data collected from the recorder showed a mean speed along the road of 34 mph, an 85th-percentile speed of 43 mph, and that 47 percent of the traffic traveled within a pace speed of 31 to 40 mph, according to the letter.

As a result of the data, Verderese recommended a posted speed limit for the road of 40 mph. He advised the Township Committee to adopt an ordinance if it would like to reduce the road's speed limit from 50 mph to 40 mph. He said the New Jersey Department of Transportation would have 90 days to review and reject the ordinance if it did not concur with the 40-mph speed limit.

If the department does not reject the proposed speed limit in the given time frame, the ordinance and the new speed limit would take effect, according to Verderese.

Deputy Mayor William Miscoski asked why the township would lower the speed limit when the data presented showed that very few cars use the road.

Committeeman Bob Faber noted that traffic on Harvey Road has decreased since nearby Meirs Road has been fixed.

"I went over Harvey Road tonight at 40 mph, and I think that is a reasonable speed," he said.

Mayor Stephen Fleischacker said the concern is not the number of vehicles using the road, but the ones traveling on it over the speed limit. He also noted that an online driving direction search engine often suggests that drivers use Harvey Road as a quicker route through the area.

The committee voted unanimously to introduce an ordinance for a 40-mph speed limit on Harvey Road.