ALLENTOWN: Heavy truck traffic rattles Church Street residents

ALLENTOWN The reopening of South Main Street to heavy truck traffic following the completion of the new county bridge is having repercussions that are being felt downtown and around the corner on Church Street.

The incessant shaking and rattling from the increasing number of heavy rigs rolling through the neighborhood these days recently prompted one longtime borough resident to bring her camera out into the street to document the problem.

Now that the bridge is fixed, and the (NJ) Turnpike is having repairs and expansion done, there is an inordinate amount of truck traffic on Church Street, homeowner Frances Brown told the Borough Council on May 22.

I sat out there a couple of days in a row, about an hour each day, and within an hour, there were 37 trucks that went by so that means there was more than one truck every two minutes, Ms. Brown told the governing body. Im in an 1840s house that shakes, and Ive had plaster and other things fall off my house.

Ms. Brown, who has lived on Church Street 25 years, noted a section of underground sewer pipe that runs beneath Church Street to the curb in front of her home broke due to the weight of the heavy truck traffic, and it cost her $1,500 to fix it. The borough also has had to foot the bill for broken pipes elsewhere under Church Street, she pointed out.

The county has jurisdiction over Church Street because it is a county road (Route 526). After Route 526 crosses west into Robbinsville, it is known locally as Robbinsville-Allentown Road. Borough residents said many trucks rolling down Church Street are headed for construction areas on Interstate 195 and the Turnpike, which the trucks are accessing via the I-195 entrance ramps on Robbinsville-Allentown Road.

Mayor Stuart Fierstein said that during the recent reconstruction of the South Main Street bridge, the county set a temporary 10-ton weight limit and 15-mph speed limit on the span, which kept the heavy truck traffic out of Allentown. Now that the bridge is done, and the weight restrictions and lower speed limit have been removed, more heavy trucks are back using roads in the half-square-mile boroughs downtown area.

The mayor told Ms. Brown the solution was the construction of the westerly bypass at the southern end of town, a county project that has gone nowhere in the past decade. The county is under tremendous pressure, he said, because of opposition from Upper Freehold officials and residents of housing developments in the township located near where the new road would be built.

In 2003, the county built a bypass off Route 526 in Upper Freehold near the Hope Fire Company and Reed Park that directs traffic around the north end of Allentown to Exit 8 of I-195. Allentown officials have been lobbying the county for a similar bypass at the southern end of the borough that would link High Street (Route 539) to Ellisdale Road in Upper Freehold and eventually connect to Robbinsville-Allentown Road (Route 526) in Robbinsville.

Weve spent the last 10 years expecting that if one bypass is built, well get the other bypass, Mr. Fierstein told Ms. Brown.

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ALLENTOWN: Heavy truck traffic rattles Church Street residents