Traffic upgrades in Ridgewood may come from developers’ pockets
Monday March 25, 2013, 10:36 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
A comprehensive, village-wide traffic analysis will eventually be required to establish an all-encompassing transportation improvement district (TID) in Ridgewood, but until then, the Planning Board can move forward with a smaller scale study to jumpstart the process.
Under a proposed transportation improvement district, developers will contribute to a fund to pay for future traffic improvements, which can include installation of new traffic signals, signs and sidewalks.
Traffic consultant John Jahr this week offered an overview of the benefits that a TID can bring to any given municipality and briefly detailed a course of action that the village can follow if it chooses to proceed in that direction.
A TID is generally described as a method of collecting money from a private developer to offset the strain that the development will have on local infrastructure, particularly streets. The funding collected is typically banked in an account until needed to pay for traffic and other road improvements in the area.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/199861131_Traffic_upgrades_in_Ridgewood_may_come_from_developers__pockets.html
Sure, the developers are more than willing to put up one way signs and / or traffic lights in front of the new Projects so the hundreds of cars passing in and out of the Projects each day will be able to speed along their way through the rest of the Village. The problem is that Ridgewood Ave, Prospect, Linwood, Glen, etc, are all going to be more busy than they were before, and the Villagers are going to bear the expense of more traffic, reduced home values, road work, and all the other things that go along with city streets. The proposals under consideration are simply going to push traffic through the rest of town, meaning more traffic on our over-burdened roads from the 1.000’s of additional car trips generated by any where from 400 to 800 more cars owned by the new families in the Projects.
No matter how much lipstick the developers put on these pig Projects, they are still going to be pigs. Some may be mislead by a bit of make-up, however, so we need to keep speaking up before our officials are fooled into kissing these porcine projects.
Our officials are not fooled at all. They are all in with the developers and the Hospital. Same team. Get it?