“We’ve had a number of decent accidents at the intersection of Stokes and Willow Grove roads,” Shamong Township Administrator Sue Onorato said.
The Shamong public works group is encouraging the Shamong Township Committee to ask the county to make these crossroads into a four-way stop intersection due to safety concerns.
Stokes and Willow Grove roads are two county roads, so Shamong does not govern the intersection in any way, shape or form, as Onorato put it.
The committee has sent a letter to the Red Lion Barracks State Police requesting the incident reports from this intersection. It is essentially asking police for the last three years of accidents that have been reported at the intersection, assuming this will be something the county will demand to view as part of the request.
“I would say at least three or four times a year there is something at this intersection,” Onorato said. “Typically, during work hours, anything that happens on the weekend I am not aware of.”
Some have argued that people from out of town travel this road, so they do not know the dangers of not stopping for the oncoming traffic because they are not as accustomed to the situation as locals are.
However, there was a bad accident there the committee recalled right around the time of Hurricane Sandy, and the two people involved were Shamong residents.
“It feels like a four-way stop,” township Engineer Dante Guzzi said.
“It really does. I almost always treat it as such because people come flying down that road,” Onorato said.
“It 100 percent should be,” Deputy Mayor Tim Gimbel said.
Committeeman Martin Mozitis suggested the possibility of LED lights to be installed on the stop signs to further enforce them, as opposed to the reflective bars Shamong stop signs currently employ.
Township Solicitor Douglas Heinold suggested “rumble strips” to slow cars as a sort of speed bump.
“I don’t think it’s as bad as speed bumps; it definitely gets people’s attention,” Heinold said. “I’m just saying as a fallback, if the county were to say no to the four-way stop.”
To go forward with this, Shamong would also need the township committee’s approval and this has been where the disconnect falls.
“The main thing would be just getting you to make a motion to move forward so that we could pass this on to the county,” Onorato said.
The motion was made by Gimbel and seconded by Mozitis but deferred by Committeeman Michael Di Croce and Mayor Kenneth Long.
“I think that it’s a bad idea,” Long said. “I think if you put a stop sign up, they’re going to blow through it anyway.”
Di Croce proposed the idea of bringing this discussion item back up after the information about the incidents has been gathered and reviewed by the committee and the county.
It was decided the discussion item would be put back on the agenda for the next meeting that will be held on Oct. 27 after the incident reports have been received from the Red Lions Barracks.
