Berlin Borough has plenty upcoming in the next few months for its roads, including resurfacing and possible modifications to neighborhood routes after a traffic study
At Berlin Borough’s Council meeting in February, Councilman Dan MacDonnell discussed numerous points of interest upcoming this summer with regard to public works, streets and roads.
This week, The Berlin Sun caught up with MacDonnell to discuss potential changes and improvements to borough roads.
At the February meeting, MacDonnell spoke about the public works department having applied for grant money for the upcoming roads program, a traffic study for the borough, a roads report detailing the condition of all borough roads, and, lastly, he reminded residents of the Mobile311 program.
As it does yearly, the department of public works applied for grant money from the state Department of Transportation. MacDonnell says the borough applied for additional money this year.
“We increased the amount that we’ve submitted for in the past because with the gas tax that the state put on everyone about a year ago, we’re seeing that the grant amounts are going up,” MacDonnell said. “So we’re hoping to get additional funding this year.”
Also on the topic of roads, MacDonnell says the borough engineer conducted a traffic study for roads that are used as cut-through roads between the White Horse Pike and Park Drive, such as Rich Avenue and Broad Street.
He says the goal moving forward is to identify areas where this problem is most prevalent and open up a discussion on how to address it with those in the affected neighborhoods.
“We had the engineer conduct a traffic study taking counts of traffic,” MacDonnell said. “He’s going to come back with some recommendations, and we’re going to hold a public meeting with the people in those neighborhoods so they can see what those recommendations are and have some input as to what recommendations should be implemented.”
The public meeting does not have an official date as of yet, however the borough is eyeing sometime in the beginning of April to open up the discussion with the public on what potential changes could be made in neighborhoods to ease cut through traffic, such as one-way roads, lower speed limits or speed humps.
MacDonnell stressed the importance of making such a meeting available for those in the neighborhoods to hear the recommended road modifications after the conclusion of the traffic study.
“I want the people to have some input, because if that’s completely unacceptable to the people that live there, then we need to know that,” MacDonnell said. “So it’s really for community feedback on the possible solutions to the traffic issue.”
In a separate issue, MacDonnell says the borough had Environmental Resolutions Inc. assess of all the locally owned roads in the borough to rate the streets on a scale of one to 10 in terms damage and structure.
“The report will assess each of the borough-owned streets in town … and then also provide back a recommended five-year road program, which takes into account the amount of money that we do receive as part of our NJ DOT grant and the amount of money we spend as a borough annually,” he said.
The report will essentially make a recommendation to the borough as to which roads it should repair over the next four years dependent on its score, with a road labeled as a one being brand new and a 10 being in need of immediate repair. Therefore, it will identify what roads are the most in need of repair and couple that information with what the borough can afford over the next few years.
This report is already complete and will be presented at the Thursday, March 14, council meeting, and roads in need of the most desperate repair as identified by the report are expected to be resurfaced this upcoming summer. MacDonnell says he expects to learn the amount of grant money Berlin Borough will receive sometime in May.
