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 31 on Eagle Rock and Oval. There's a requirement for left turn on Eagle Rock as well as on Oval. Separate left turn lanes are required. The roadway is amply -- has ample width to provide them, but there's nothing in the development that calls for it. Except in the analysis that was made in the traffic report put them in, but they weren't called for on the plan. So the applicant is required -- requested to put in -- was requested by his own traffic people to put it in, not exactly, but he just made that analysis and put those improvements in to show better levels of service, but that better level of service doesn't exist unless those plans are put in. Because the plans that are there now without the signal, without a left turn lane on both Oval and on Eagle Rock, without those turning lanes available this project shows a complete degrading of level of service. But that doesn't happen when you make the improvement. But the improvements are made in the drafters report but they're not made on the site plan and they're not made in any developers agreement, which is what -- probably should be provided. If there's a developer's agreement between the Township and the applicant that would almost bypass the Residential Site Improvement people. A lot of the traffic that exists -- all of the traffic that exists is going to have to go down through

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 32 the existing development to get to the intersection of Oval and Eagle Rock. There's no other way to go. There's -- another place is shown on the plan, but they're not applicants, and they're not co-applicants and they have not deeded or conveyed any access to their property to this applicant, so they can't have access to anything else. And when they do put in the traffic the way it is so that one, one road going out, there is a requirement for traffic calming measures and there's a problem because in that area when you get into the older development there were no sidewalks provided and no parking on the road. So there's a lack of parking once you come into that. There will be a lack of parking and a lack of, lack of sidewalk. There -- the sidewalks are interesting. And they're interesting because in the proposal sidewalks are required by ADA. The sidewalk width by ADA have to be five foot every 200 feet to allow wheelchairs to pass. This -- sidewalks are not that -- were not taken care of on both sides of the street and they were also not enough to complete with the ADA guidelines. The ADA guidelines also call for an accessible route from the room to the garage and to, this is interesting. The ADA calls for it to be, calls for it to be between, an accessible route between the persons

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 33 room and every other facility on the site. Which means that you have to have ADA compliant routes from the apartment to all the other apartments. As well as to the dog kennel and the garage. The garage is interesting, because it calls for, to meet the garage parking requirement tandem parking was put in. No where in the Residential Site Improvement Standards is tandem parking called for. The only place, the only mention was in the Residential Site Improvement Standard have that refer to any parking space size is 9 foot by 18 foot. They don't call for tandem, they don't call for anything else. Tandem itself, we usually recommend if there's valet parking, if there's not valet parking it's very difficult to handle electric vehicle parking, which is required by another statute in the New Jersey DOT -- New Jersey, which is on -- I don't recall the name of that statute, but it's mentioned by your board engineer as well, which was a good point, that it's not -- it's called for by statute, but it's not called for on the plan. So that has to be included in. So basically what we have now is a plan that has no access to the outside, except through one roadway at, which exits at Eagle Rock Avenue. There's no construction circulation plan. Now, if there was a plan, a guidance plan, a development

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 34 plan, whatever you want to call it, it would call for and have a construction circulation plan, a regular circulation plan, a water and sewer circulation plan. It would have all these different plans that would be -- the reason for that is that the developer would know and when he's -- what he's going to be required to be put in and these off track contributions that he would have to make to upgrade anything so that development could be handled. But more importantly than that, it not only guaranties that the plan is workable by both the developer and by the municipality, the municipality can't be called on at the last minute to say they need to float a big bond to get water supply for another project that should've been provided in the beginning phases. The next thing we were doing is looking at the street width. Most of the street width -- most of the street width called for a 24 foot travel width with no parking. Some places where they have parking, it's perpendicular parking, which we don't recommend at all on a curve especially. Not on a main corridor. And they're there in a couple of places. Another thing is sight triangles. The reason that sight triangles is to make sure that there's enough sight distance for persons to pull out of a garage or

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 35 driveway, because of that, and because of the necessity of it sight triangles are called for in the completion list. Usually boards give variances or design waivers on a site plan, usually that's given and say that's a condition of preliminary. So the Residential Site Improvement Standard calls for a application to be a complete application with everything in it so that it can be just approved or disapproved. And there's no -- nowhere did I see anything on some of the things that are required that I see, like sight distances and sight triangles and anything go to the Residential Site Improvement Board for approval for -- because that's not a de minimis exception. Well, let's get to de minimis exceptions. De minimis exceptions are noted in relief letters. Those de minimis -- first de minimis. De minimis means very small. Legally it's a legal term that says it's less than one tenth of a penny, which is not very large, is the legal term that is defined in some of the law books. However, they give examples of de minimis exceptions in interpretation documents that come in and that includes things like type of curb, type of piping, whether you're going to use concrete or PVC. Things like that. It doesn't include major things, it doesn't include something like leaving out a traffic signal or leaving

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 36 out a guide rail. Those things are not de minimis. They're errors because they're just not there and that's not supplied. There was no air quality study performed. Usually with a parking garage over 100 cars being parked require air quality analysis in the Environmental Impact Statement, but I didn't see anything like that here. Let me sort of wrap this up a bit before we go to the slides. In conclusion the traffic from the cul-de-sac roadways is excessive traffic. We're adding double what's there now. So we're talking about triple the traffic. And tripling the traffic out of one exit, it's always problematic and with no other exits, approved exits, we have a problem. The intersection of Eagle Rock and Oval Road has to be signalized and it has to be included as an individual item, preferably with plans in a report that indicates that a signal is warranted at that intersection. And that should be done, otherwise larger, even larger geometric improvements may be required. And the road itself has, at Eagle Rock, everything comes down to Eagle Rock and that one intersection. And that intersection has to be signalized. Oval Road -- Oval Road has to be signalized

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 37 and it has to be included with a water analysis and a funding plan, because who's going to pay for it. It's indicated -- in the first traffic study it was indicated that it was warranted, but that warrant never addressed the thousand foot proximity rule that it's in the MUTCD, which was passed I think in December of last year. So that was not looked at. In addition all the through traffic was not taken into consideration with improvements that can be made for sidewalks. Some of the sidewalk improvements that are not called for and the applicant has put in a road that we think is deficient in width. Places where a fire could breakout should be addressed. The preponderance of fire, forest fires in the state recently, and we had a problem here at this site, not with a forest fire but with a lightning strike of a tree that closed Oval Road for a couple hours and there was no way to get in and out. Now, that's an important thing. I approved once a project that had only one way in and out and there was an accident at that intersection and it was only nine, I think it was nine to ten single family dwelling units, but even though there was only nine or ten the accident occurred at the street, blocking the bulb of that intersection, blocking the intersection so that nobody

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 38 could drive in or out with emergency vehicles. The resident from that place came out and when he came out he saw the accident result and his daughter was in the car in an accident. He immediately had a heart attack and emergency sources could not get in to the site and since they couldn't get in to the site he died and his daughter lived with minor injuries. But there's always a need once in a while for an emergency that you can't control, forest fire, a collision. You're going to triple the volume, you're going to have a problem with more accidents because the more turns and the more inferences -- interference between vehicles you have, the more traffic accidents you have. It's just a proven study. The road slopes are higher than the Residential Site Improvement Standards allow. Now, the road slopes in the whole area are problematic. When it rains the roads act as open ditches and the water doesn't go into the catch basins but goes by them because of the slope. If you have a slope of ten percent going down the road and the cross slope is 2 percent, the volume is going down as opposed to over into the catch basin. So when you get to the bottom of the hill the catch basin stops but the water keeps going and it creates flooding conditions. So you have to handle that. One of 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 39 ways to handle it is to have the road that goes down have a level spot in it. And the level spot is almost like a swale across the road to lower it and also work with the cross slope. Have a higher cross slope than the normal two and a half percent, which is the standard, standard cross slope with the DOT and local roads. So you have to have that modified to help remove the flooding that is occurring now. And if you go to Upton Road you can see that it's a 40-foot paved roadway with minimal cross slopes. So that road in that area creates a lot of flooding. And the slopes are quite obviously a problem when you see some residential homes in Verona have guide rails and have to have -- have to go back and forth across the front lawn to get up to their garage and they have guide rail on front lawns. I've never seen that before in a residential house. Where you have guide rails in the front lawn to keep people from falling off the driveway as they go into their garage. The important point to make is that the slopes are so severe that some additional design has to be put in to the roadways and the designs have to be modified all over and they have to be done to meet RSIS standards and ADA standards and FHWA standards. And there are no -- and other standards for the electric vehicle charging

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 40 stations that have to be input as part of the application. So all these things are missing and if they're missing the board can't really give them a vote to say that this is an acceptable thing. You have to really go through ADA on some of them and they don't give variances in the ADA for sidewalk locations and that. And they're not there. The sidewalks are called for in RSIS on both sides of the street because of the density. And the density is medium to heavy, depending upon the amount of land that's going to be dedicated as open space. So it's the open space area in the, minimized in dedication. Creates a medium density but if -- but the sidewalks are so short and comply that it doesn't make any difference, they still need the same amount of sidewalk on the medium density for the roadway width as you do normally. So it doesn't really say that it's going to give you a way out by having a medium or high density. And back in the memo I wrote down under attachment B a list of discrepancies from where there are problems where the RSIS is not met. The RSIS requirements are not met. And to tell you truth in all honesty in the all years that I've been practicing, I've never seen an application so incomplete before. Missing so many things for completion where there's no, there's