BERKELEY – A traffic signal was installed at the intersection of Hickory Lane and Route 9 but officials were still unsure when it will go live.
At a recent Township Council meeting, elected officials said they were in the dark about when it would light up, despite reaching out to the state. Because Route 9 is a state road, they are in charge of any changes at the intersection.
The Berkeley Times
reached out to the New Jersey Department of Transportation, which responded that it will be turned on at some point in the summer of 2025.
During certain times of the day, making a left onto Route 9 north is dangerous. Drivers often wait a long time, and then get impatient and take a chance when there is a small break in traffic from the northbound and southbound lanes.
This is why Berkeley officials have been pushing for a traffic light there – they didn’t want a fatal collision or any more serious crashes.
The intersection wasn’t always this busy. For a long time, Hickory led to just a group of warehouse-sized commercial buildings and the Ocean County Utilities Authority. Now, though, there are scores of homes and the residents use Hickory as the easiest way to get to Route 9.
Bayville has filled in over the last decade or so. There’s still a lot of woods to be found, but the uses of the land butt up against each other. On a sunny day, you can see people walking their dogs on the county Rail Trail alongside heavily used roads. You turn the corner and suddenly there’s a church.
In some cases, even the Rail Trail encroaches, as people have to put signs up telling people not to park at their house to use the trail.
And, of course, everyone is trying to avoid Route 9.
Locals have complained that people heading south on 9 will cut through their neighborhood to get to the Garden State Parkway a few minutes quicker. They talk about a number of issues that have contributed to this. One of which is that GPS devices will route heavy trucks through the neighborhood. At a council meeting, a resident told a story about a semi-tractor-trailer driver couldn’t get through Amsterdam Avenue and Butternut Lane and had to knock on doors at 1 a.m. to wake people up to move their cars so he could get his truck through.
Meanwhile, the neighborhood itself, with twisty roads and cars parking on the streets, makes for poor visibility and dangerous conditions. Residents have complained about a semi knocking over garbage cans. They said another time, a truck hit cars and drove off; police had to access doorbell cameras to find the culprit. The residents ask what if these were children who got hit instead of inanimate objects?
The town installed blinking stop signs, painted crosswalks, and put in rumble strips to slow down traffic and make drivers aware of pedestrians.
Town officials were against the idea of speed humps because they cause problems for first responder vehicles.
Township officials have wanted a traffic signal to be built at the corner of Hickory Lane and Route 9, and it was finally approved in 2024 to be built in 2025.
One of the conditions for the approval of the Hickory Farms development was to put money into escrow for an eventual traffic light.
Ernie Peters, engineer for the township, had said that the township required the developer to do studies every other year. The police department applied to the State Department of Transportation to analyze the data.
The State requires any town that asks for a traffic light to pay 25% of the cost, Peters said. The cost is approximately $250,000, so the township’s portion would be about $62,500. The town had about $75,000 in escrow from the developer to cover it.
