Once again a traffic study was trotted out at a public hearing held on April 12 (comments limited to three minutes per person). And once again it was a farce with glaring omissions and no traffic expert to explain his conclusions. He arrived one and a half hours from when the meeting began.

Once again this traffic study has no validity. How can you have a traffic study when you have no accurate count of the number of cars and/or people?

Traffic studies generally only bolster the view of the person who paid the bill. This person wants to have his project deemed buildable and therefore hear of no impact on the surrounding roads and their traffic.

There are also glaring errors and distinct omissions in this particular study. For example, there was no mention of the traffic impact that will be associated with the new ferry operations in Belford. There was no mention of the impact of service at Route 36 and Main Street, or Route 36 and East Road. The ferry service impact must be factored into the development planned on Sandy Hook in order to compute the optimum impacts.

The study also omits the effects of other large-scale developments. For example, along the one access road to the south there are planned hundreds of units in the city of Long Branch. When these developments are built, there will be hundreds more cars and people. Additionally, this report ignores the possible impact of the pending gigantic project known as the town center in Middletown. This will have a large impact at the Broad Street intersection in Keyport.

Other errors are obvious. One case in point is that eastbound Route 36 does permit right turns onto Main Street.

Middletown has many more units being planned than are mentioned in this report. Regency Park will contain 110 garden apartments, not 44, as stated in the report. The Dunes at the Spy House will hold 123 condominium units, not 81. Middletown senior housing will consist of 180 units, not 115, and will also contain a public recreation facility with two baseball fields and a soccer field.

The impact on secondary roads was also not addressed in the study. Only some of the main intersections were examined. Cars seeking other corridors to avoid traffic and searching for alternate ways to reach destinations were not factored in to represent the real totals for the cumulative vehicular trips. Construction equipment, trucks, buses, and clients, customers, visitors, and vendors generated from this commercial development will seek arterial roads to avoid traffic congestion.

With the real amount of units to be built off-site and the on-site identified uses of the building in the Sandy Hook Partners proposal left out of the study, there is no way to determine the actual number of trips and accurate calculation of vehicular impacts to the Hook and surrounding communities. How can we do anything but throw this study out?

This [rehabilitation] is being projected as being phased in in three parts: Phase 1 to yield 36 building uses, with a subsequent Phase II adding up to 42, and then followed by a Phase III with up to 78 structures for use. But where [in the traffic study] is that addressed?

This generalized synopsis (the traffic study) seems to perceive that what is to be built along the main arterial roads is causing all the traffic, and therefore the Sandy Hook Partners’ additional traffic will not harm an already poor level of service operation.

At the Middletown Planning Board the other night, the planner said that the developer should have come before the board to present its plans. In the past, the fort’s administrators have extended this courtesy to the township Planning Board. The Middletown Planning Board could objectively assess the project if it where presented with the facts and if the National Park Service would give out the actual figures associated with the development. Then, and only then, can appropriate determinations be made about the impact of what is to be built on Sandy Hook.

Judith Stanley Coleman

Middletown