WEST ORANGE, NJ — The West Orange Police Department made 41 stops and issued 29 summonses to drivers who did not brake for a pedestrian decoy in the crosswalk in front of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, according to an officer at the March 9 Pedestrian Safety Advisory Board meeting.
Officer Scott Smarsh of the WOPD’s Traffic Bureau reported that those numbers were on par with the amount seen in the two previous pedestrian decoy details the department has run at the park. Smarsh said this latest program was run on Thursday, Feb. 16, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. — a period that gets a high volume of lunchtime traffic on Main Street. He said half of the drivers stopped were township residents, and all were given fliers outlining crosswalk rules so they will know to stop next time.
Smarsh further added that a fourth pedestrian decoy detail will occur sometime in June, which is around when the WOPD will also participate in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s annual “Click It or Ticket” seat belt enforcement campaign from May 22 through June 4. That was good news to those at the PSAB meeting, who hope those types of actions will continue.
“You have to keep doing it all over the town,” resident Rosary Morelli said to Smarsh. “That was great. I commend you for that.”
Sangeeta Badlani of the Nikhil Badlani Foundation asked whether officers can check for any other violations besides not stopping for a pedestrian when they do the next decoy detail, to which Smarsh answered that it is difficult to focus on anyone beyond those who do not stop for pedestrians considering all it takes to run a pedestrian decoy detail. The officer explained that such a detail requires one person to stand in the crosswalk, a spotter in the perimeter to call out cars that do not stop and three to five officers a half a block down to pull people over.
That does not mean other types of lawbreakers are not being reprimanded, though. Smarsh said patrol officers spend an hour or two in speed enforcement details almost every day. They also check regularly for distracted driving and license violations, he said.
The discussion on stopping for crossing pedestrians led to a conversation on what New Jersey law actually considers to be jaywalking. Smarsh explained that people are legally allowed to cross a street perpendicularly from the curb, even if they are not in a marked crosswalk. Crossing diagonally from a curb is considered jaywalking.
Pedestrians are also barred from crossing against a traffic signal or in the path of a moving vehicle that is so close it cannot yield, according to state law.
Pleasant Valley Civic Association President Roz Moskovitz Bielski pointed out that there will be numerous people crossing the streets without paying attention to traffic laws at the West Orange High School graduation — which will be held at WOHS this year — prompting her to ask Smarsh whether there will be additional police present to keep everyone safe. The officer answered that the WOPD will manage graduation traffic in the same way it handles the July 4 celebration, though he stressed that pedestrians really need to be careful. After all, he said, drivers are not always the ones at fault when crashes occur.
“In my opinion, in being a police officer for 22 years and seeing a lot of stuff and doing a lot of crash investigations, a lot of this stuff also falls on the pedestrian,” Smarsh said, pointing out that drivers are only required to stop for pedestrians who are in marked crosswalks even though pedestrians legally can cross perpendicularly from a curb. “Pedestrians don’t understand the laws. They think that they have an entitlement to step off the curb and everything in the world is supposed to stop at that point in time. Well, that’s not the case.”
The PSAB agreed that both pedestrians and drivers need to be educated on crossing rules in order to prevent collisions from occurring. Edison Park Superintendent Tom Ross said children in particular need to be trained because so many today spend their time indoors with video games, oblivious to how careful they need to be outside on a street. Ross said he has had to pull his own children back from roads because they were not looking both ways before crossing.
Planning Board Vice Chairman Lee Klein suggested instituting programs about crossing laws similar to those already in place to teach children about recycling and buckling their seat belts. Klein added that, these days, children are often the ones who remind their parents to recycle and wear a seat belt. That is vital because pedestrians of all ages should stay in crosswalks, Klein said, just as drivers have to stay in their lanes.
“I don’t understand why pedestrians feel they can do whatever they want,” Klein said. “You can’t stop a 3,000-pound vehicle that quickly.”
According to Smarsh, the WOPD is already on top of trying to educate residents. Through its participation in the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority’s Street Smart NJ campaign, he said the department has access to informative materials that can be given to residents and posted on the township and West Orange 411 Facebook pages. Morelli asked Smarsh to give her copies of such material so she can distribute it to the local senior citizen community, which Smarsh thought was a great idea.
Civil engineer Mike Dannemiller recommended doing a new midblock crossing between the Edison Park entrance and parking lot as another way of keeping pedestrians safe. Dannemiller even handed out a drawing of a road similar in size to Main Street but with a pedestrian island and curb extensions, which narrow the distance a person has to cross, as an example of what could be done in West Orange. And the curb does not have to be restructured to get the extensions — he said they can be temporarily painted on instead so the township can see how they work before making a decision on whether to use them permanently.
Township engineer Leonard Lepore said any such changes would have to be approved by Essex County since Main Street is a county road. This caused some to doubt that the idea would come to fruition anytime soon, but Lepore said the county might not be resistant to the concept. He said Essex County recently agreed to a curb extension on Eagle Rock Avenue opposite Harrison Avenue, so they might be amenable to altering Main Street, as well.
Lepore also said that he will soon meet with a contractor to discuss the installation of two new flashing school speed limit signs on Pleasant Valley Way. The engineer said he wants them on arms extended out into the roadway, which would put them above drivers as vehicles come down the street. He said he wants to look into getting new signs for Gregory Avenue, as well, since the current ones operate using phone lines. That means they often do not work in wet weather, when the phone lines short.
On top of that, Lepore said he included funding for the design and placement of a traffic signal on Alisa Drive in this year’s capital budget. Of course, he said, the budget has not been finalized yet. Even if it were, he said Essex County will have to approve any plans for a traffic light there.
Looking ahead, Sunil Badlani suggested that the PSAB hold a working session in which it used its action plan to create a timeline of action items it could accomplish in 2017 — an idea he had previously raised at the board’s last meeting. The board agreed that should be done, though Councilman Jerry Guarino said he will first have to check with the township’s legal department before scheduling anything to determine whether such a meeting must be made open to the public.
Additionally, Guarino said he had requested another working session with Essex County officials to discuss what projects can be done to make West Orange’s streets safer. He said one had been set, though the county had canceled that meeting due to a misunderstanding over whether or not the public would be invited to the meeting. According to Guarino, at this stage, the county would like to work only with the PSAB. Another meeting needs to be scheduled soon, he said, because cooperation with Essex County is crucial to getting anything done on county roads.
“We need to get them to work more with us,” Guarino said. “We’ve just got to keep pushing them, keep pushing them, pushing them and we’ll get (progress).”
Photos by Sean Quinn
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