September 3, 2025 Planning Board Regular Meeting Transcript - WEHI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 21 to accomplish. So it's not accomplished in a single year. Since it's going to take a couple years those plans will guarantee that the water will be there, the sewage will be there and the roadway connections will be there. This project has been built up but when it was built up it did not follow the rules for a general development plan and the owners of the property decided what they would do is build out one of the sections and the connections and the interconnections were sold off as part of the land, so there was no interconnections in the future. There were no water plans made up. No one knew where the water would come from. That -- the plan was something that will be done later. Well, the RSIS said you're supposed to do all these things now prior to giving preliminary approval. Now, that makes it a lot different. There have been cases that have come out that have indicated that if you have a property and you had interconnection to that property and subdivided off and you didn't maintain control, you did not maintain control of that, those interconnections, then that, then you have a problem, and it's not for the courts to resolve that type of a problem or for the boards to resolve the problem. The developer has to resolve the problem by having interconnections in the future built into his

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 22 program development. And if it's not done then he has to work it out with the owners of the land. So those owners of the land now have to part of the application because they are agreeing by this application if they are part of it to make and allow the connection. So you have problems with interconnections in this site and you have a project that took many, and is taking many years, but does not have the interconnection. So one of the things if you're going to have, if you're going to have a project that has interconnections, those interconnections have to be made prior to the application. You have to have a sealed survey that shows the, shows the land and it shows all the land with concrete monuments so that everyone knows where the property lines and boundaries are for sure. And in addition to that more importantly where the access is and restrictions that are on that land go and where they're noted. In other words, if you have a, if you have a project and that project calls for a roadway interconnection, that roadway interconnection has to have an agreement with the prior property owner and the new property owner when it's sold. And then when it's part of a subdivision and subdivided off, if you own it all and you subdivide it off you have to maintain access. You can't just go get the access back again

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 23 when you give it up. You have to barter for it or whatever if you're a landowner. So you can't, because they said they don't feel that they should be bartering and condemning lands to make accesses if in fact the landowner already had control of those accesses but didn't utilize them and maintain those controls in the future. This application is also interesting because there's a number of trips. The number of trips are divided out by the average daily trips. The average daily trips are used to determine the length of cul-de-sacs. If you -- and the type of road go together. So the type of cul-de-sac, how long the cul-de-sac is and how many trips are going to go onto that cul-de-sac. Once you understand how many trips the cul-de-sac can handle then you can see where these trips are going to be going. In this instance all the trips that come into this site have to come out to the intersection of Eagle Rock and Oval Road. So if there's an accident on Oval Road or a tree comes down after being struck by lightning, which recently occurred, and you can't clear it, then there's no way to get in and out. If you have a steep driveway and steep concerns like you do on the cul-de-sac that goes out to

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 24 another one of the drives, you find that you have a problem there because it's a steep grade. If the grade is -- the grade is limited to a maximum of ten percent in the RSIS standard. They don't really give variances for that. So you have to get a variance for steep slope if you can get one. The steep slope is a problem. Ten percent grade is where the problem starts seriously. At ten percent grade in an icy covered, snow covered roadway or a slushy covered roadway creates a condition that there's no friction, you lose contact with the surface of the road at that time. So what happens is a vehicle coming down a slope of ten degrees can not stop on that ten degree slope. So what has to happen is it has to be a flat spot before -- at the end of that to allow the vehicle to stop. If the cars going down the slope and comes in at a speed there's no way to stop it at the bottom. Now, that has happened in many driveways and many people have tested this. And at one time there was a project in Mahwah where they wanted a driveway put on and three township engineers, traffic engineers testified as to the slope requirement. The slope requirement by the three traffic engineers was ten percent grade with a 100 percent level area before entering the intersection. MR. AFRAN: Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry. It's

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 25 almost impossible to hear because of the ventilation going on. In this instance, since it's not very hot, could we possibly shut it because I frankly can't hear myself. (Whereupon, a short recess is taken.) A. As I was saying, the slope of ten percent is very critical. And the slope that's out there now is over ten percent, so it has to be redone and it has to maintain that, otherwise we have to get a variance from the state as opposed to getting a variance from this board because this board doesn't have that power anymore. They used to have the power but the power for parking spaces, parking variance, etc., is now switched over to the Residential Site Improvement Standard Board, which is not necessarily the best. Now, the slopes on this site are problematic because you have over ten percent not just at the one cul-de-sac leaving the site, but at, within, within various sections of roadway that we have identified on slides and we can show you. But the main thing to know is that we have access, none of the accesses are present, except the existing Oval Road/Eagle Rock Avenue intersection. That's the only intersection that has access to the outside world we could say because everything else is blocked off. It's either emergency

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 exit only or it's proposed as an exit and none of them are exit -- there are no other exits or entrances. And since there are no other entrances or exits interconnecting to another road out, there has to be something done. One thing is you have to lower the volume that's going to be adjusted. You say well, what's the volume being put out. The average daily trip, which was used to maintain a rural type setting in an area by the Residential Site Improvement Standard people. There are approximately existing 2377 annual daily trips. Average daily trips. And the new trips that are being put in are 2000 -- 5105 average daily trips. So we're seeing with the total new trips there's almost, almost double what's there now. So you're doubling the traffic. And there's a traffic signal that was proposed in the previous traffic report. This application does not call for a traffic signal. It doesn't call for any improvements that they're going to do on that intersection. It doesn't say it's going to pay for the traffic -- it says, the traffic signal will be provided but it doesn't say who's going to provide it or what amount would be paid by the developer as opposed to the Township. In addition to that there's an additional signal at Eagle Rock and the next one, that's down further to

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 the west. So Laurel has to be improved as well and there's no, there's no approval for this light at Oval and Eagle Rock. Since there's no approval it has to be approved and there's a question because the distance to Laurel is, from it is not that substantial. And since it's not that substantial there's a question about as to how it would operate. The first thought was it would be operated by putting the roads into coordinated phasing. Coordinated phasing is normally done but if the light is less than a thousand feet from say the next intersection interconnecting those lights is not something that works. So the new manual from, Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which is supposed to be followed by the RSIS, indicates that if the distance between signals is a thousand feet or less that a signal shouldn't be put in. So now you'd have to get approval from them to breaking the MUTCD rules which are the law of the state by Title 23. They refer that to Title 23 that if the -- if it's in the MUTCD it has to be followed as much as possible by the New Jersey state, which includes municipalities as well as the state. So there's a question because Laurel is only 750 feet from the intersection. It serves this entire section, and that traffic is going to double or more. It probably comes out triple as an impact since the numbers of trips

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 28 that come out are in the new total is 5106, existing is 2377. So you could see that that distance, it's almost, it's almost triple the traffic at that intersection at Oval Road. Since it's almost triple the traffic and there's no indication that a traffic signal is acceptable or has approval from the state or from the MUTCD by the RSIS, there's a question whether that intersection will be able to handle the traffic. Now, the question that comes up is well, the RSIS says in the interpretation that if the intersection -- if an intersection has a subconnection or a connection that goes to another street and you put it in you don't have to count the existing traffic. Well, that works fine for small intersections. If you have a cul-de-sac with five or six houses and you add it and make it seven houses, you don't really need any, or eight houses or nine houses, you don't have any problems with one intersection. One cul-de-sac with one bulb on it and you make a small change. But if you have something that creates a substantial input and a substantial, see what the wording is exactly, if it has a substantial impact then you have to include the existing traffic into that traffic to see what the input would be. This was not done on this application. The volumes were almost tripled and yet since -- while they were tripled, input

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 29 was not gathered on all of them. And what they did was they indicated what the input would be for the project with the volume but not with the volume plus the existing volume. But just the proposed volume alone and you need to look at the proposed volume as well as the existing to see what the input -- impact is for the changes and that has to be done yet. And in addition there are numerous site problems. Site distance problems caused by the slope, the steep hills and the curves. You have cars that are parked on a curve, that are parked perpendicular to the curb on some of project coming into the building. You have slopes that go into the garage that are in excess of ten percent. You have a major problem with sidewalks. Well, sidewalk problem is one because the driveway have such steep slopes on them and the roads have steep slopes on them that the driveway have, and the areas where the interconnections are, the roadways itself are over ten percent in grade and if the roads are ten percent in grade the question is, what do you do with the sidewalk. You can't put it at ten percent because the maximum ADA allows you is five percent. So if ADA calls for five and RSIS gets ten, you have a problem. You need sidewalk on both sides of the street, according to the RSIS guidelines. But the RSIS guidelines are the

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 30 rule not the guidelines anymore. So instead of just getting a variance or design waiver from the municipality you have to go to the RSIS Board with your changes, which makes it a little different. As opposed to the power the board had previously you could just, you can give them a variance or you could give out a parking variance, you can't give out parking variances anymore. The variances are for -- the parking variances are not supposed to be given by the municipality. They have to be given by the Residential Site Improvement Board. And we'll quote some of that on the screen for you so you get a look at the exact wording. Because most people have not coped with the fact that you have to have certain water allowances. Certain light allowances. There's no light studies that are done on this to determine if lighting was needed or not. But couple -- there are numerous locations also that guide rails required because of the steepness. The idea to put guide rails in the residential zone is unusual and it doesn't usually occur, except in large drainage basins with parking lots nearby. In this instance we have a requirement for guide rails in numerous locations which is over a 4 foot drop from the edge of the road it requires guide rails. You just go back a minute to the left-turn lane