NJ DOT suggests converting Route 35 to two-way traffic in Lavallette for safety, sparking negative responses
Driving in Lavallette in the summer almost requires your head to be on a swivel as hazards pop out from all directions.
More Stories
The town of Lavallette on Ocean County’s barrier island is packed this time of year. When the New Jersey Department of Transportation suggested changing one-way traffic on Route 35 to both directions on both sides of the highway to improve safety, the objections came quickly.
Driving in Lavallette in the summer almost requires your head to be on a swivel as hazards pop out from all directions.
“There are a lot of people here. Lot of kids, and they’re all not paying a lot of attention,” said Lavallette Mayor Walter LaCicero.
Over the winter, the state did what’s known as a road safety audit for a stretch of Route 35 on the barrier island. One of the suggestions to improve safety was to “consider converting both the northbound (NB) and southbound (SB) corridors into two-way roadways to improve connectivity and reduce driver confusion.”
The response from every single person that News 12 asked was negative.
The study did show an increase in crashes during summer months, and that’s nothing unusual for a tourist-driven town, says the mayor. But parking downtown would become a nightmare.
“First of all, you’d need to determine if a car was backing out to give you a spot. How you would do that without seeing the backup lights is beyond me,” said Mayor LaCicero.
“To change it to oncoming traffic where people are not paying attention, other people coming across would cause head-on collisions which are the worst,” said Jason Boekholt, owner of Ben Franklin store on Route 35.
Although the police chief says the state changing Route 35 will likely never see the light of day, folks are encouraged to come out to a special public meeting on July 13 from 3-5 p.m. at Lavallette Town Hall to discuss this and other ways to make getting around one of the shore’s top spots safer.
