April 2, 2025 Planning Board Regular Meeting Minutes

have to wait for an opening given the traffic patterns during the day on Main Street. Ms. Bullock said he will have to wait for the traffic engineer on what studies he may have performed in that regard. Jason Hunter at 17 Linwood Way asked Ms. Bullock, can you take a left out of the parking area if there is a double line when coming out. Ms. Bullock said as far as she knows it’s a history of the accessibility on and off the site, yes. Ms. McGovern added the law doesn’t prohibit it. PRESENTATION The traffic engineer, Patrick Downey, entered on the record, he was sworn under oath and his credentials were accepted by the board. He testified to the following: Mr. Downey will go through the key finding of the traffic impact of parking assessment prepared by his office on February 18", 2025. It pertains to both the traffic generation and the parking demands of these particular proposals. Starting with the traffic impact portion, they looked at the industry standard trip generation rates which are published by the Institute of Transportation Engineer. Based on their projections for this changing use, there is a net reduction in traffic for this project. The reason being that while a story is being added, floor 2 is being converted from what is presently an office to residential which has a lesser traffic impact. Even if they put this aside and look at this as a brand-new project, the trip generation would still be nominal. Peak hour trip generation would be 10 trips or less during the week. To put this in perspective, New Jersey DOT would identify 100 peak hour trips as a threshold of what you would consider significant. Therefore, it is their professional opinion that there will not be a perceptible traffic impact from this project. In terms of parking, a total of 25 parking spaces are required with a combination of office and residential components of the project. The proposed parking supply is 25 spaces, in consideration of the extra credit for the permission of EV parking spaces. Additionally, to add some context throughout the area of the site, there are numerous transits stops and mass transit available. It is a fairly pedestrian conducive environment with good sidewalk connectivity that makes residential and office opportunities. All factors that produce automobile dependency will be from employees from the office space and for residential

onment with good sidewalk connectivity that makes residential and office opportunities. All factors that produce automobile dependency will be from employees from the office space and for residential portion which in turn has the capacity to reduce the trip generation and parking demand. Regarding the site triangles, when you look at the driveway it has a couple of benefits. The first is it’s an existing condition; it is not being modified in any way. There is also going to be less traffic in the driveway so that is an improvement. Geometrically, the site is a bit steep so the driver approaching the road from the driveway is actually set pretty high relative to the road. That gives them better visibility and the ability to potentially even see over some potential obstructions or parked vehicles in the area. Some of these site triangles that were discussed before, those are intersection site distance. Essentially, it's a little bit more than what's actually required for just a safe operation. That minimum is known as stopping site distance, which is only about 250 feet for a design speed of 35 miles per hour. Mr. Downey would say the site triangles shown on the plan are conservative in a number of ways. Overall, there is little to no traffic impact as a result of this project. Compliant on parking, it's a fairly great project from a traffic perspective.