January 1999 Status Report - "Ringwood Avenue Bypass" Proposal  (Also referred to as "Alternate Route Three")

 

As it now stands, plans for a "Bypass" road have been tabled by County officials.

For a number of years there had been talk of building a new road that would further connect Interstate 287 to Wanaque, Ringwood and West Milford.  Although the stated goal was to alleviate traffic along Ringwood Avenue during rush hour, no non-road options were even considered.

After receiving a study of three possible road plans, the Passaic County Board of Chosen Freeholders in the early 90's chose to pursue "alternate three", which came to be known as the Ringwood Avenue Bypass.  This plan called for a new road that would be parallel to, but separate from, Ringwood Avenue, north from Rt. 287 up to the Raymond Dam.  In the vicinity of the Raymond Dam, the new road would have joined Ringwood Avenue, which from that point north would have been widened to two lanes in each direction.

In the summer of 1997 the State's Department of Environmental Protection soundly rejected the environmental impact statement for the Bypass Road proposal.  Momentum for the project waned, and the plan ended under a new Board of Chosen Freeholders, but could be revived in the future.

Some individuals have suggested that if there is to be no bypass road, then Ringwood Avenue should be widened into two lanes in each direction.

It may, at first glance, seem harmless to expand a roadway in the hope of cutting a few minutes off the morning commute.  In reality, however, there are enormous environmental, economic, and social consequences of such projects when they connect areas rich with undeveloped land, such as Wanaque, Bloomingdale, Ringwood and West Milford, to interstate highways.  And, in the long run, the roads simply don't work.

History shows us that across northern New Jersey (as is the case elsewhere in the country), when a road is expanded to "ease traffic" it has resulted in a short reprieve followed eventually by traffic congestion as bad as or worse than it had been before the expensive "improvements". This is because new roads or road expansions actually attract more traffic.   Developers of industrial properties in Ringwood, for example, have long sought expansion of Ringwood Avenue to facilitate truck traffic to and from the Route 287 interchange at Union Avenue.  New roads and road expansions stimulate accelerated housing and commercial development, and this "suburban sprawl" brings with it even more cars and trucks.  Consider Route 4, Route 17, Route 10, and Route 80.  Each of these roads was either constructed or expanded in order to "alleviate" traffic problems.  Yet in each case, these roadways are now a nightmare at rush hour and often at other times of the day as well.

As a new road or a new lane in an existing road improves the accessibility of an area, there is an explosion of development that follows.  This scenario has been played out repeatedly, devouring piece by piece what's left of New Jersey's open space, and degrading community quality of life.  Some will argue that development is kept in check by the local zoning regulations and other planning tools in municipal Master Plans. However, Master Plans and zoning are subject to political influence.  In Ringwood in 1996, the Borough Council changed the primary residential zone to allow nearly double the density of development (see "R-40V" article on Land Use page of this web site).  Politicians may come and go, but a major road project, once built, will likely influence the character of an area permanently.

A new road or a road expansion in the Ringwood Avenue corridor would be a serious mistake for the following reasons:

• The essential character of upper Passaic County would be drastically changed by suburban sprawl.
• Some of northern New Jersey's last remnants of open space, wildlife habitat and uncrowded, semi rural-lands would be lost.
• Water quality for millions of New Jersey residents would be threatened. The Wanaque reservoir watershed provides vital drinking water for 2.5 million of the state's residents. New development spurred by improved road access would produce pollution (from runoff) that would degrade the water quality.  Governor Whitman has called for the preservation rather than the development of watershed land. In the long run it is also economically more sensible to discourage development in watershed areas to avoid expensive filtration and treatment of a polluted water supply.
• Local property taxes would skyrocket.  New housing developments would cost local boroughs more than would be returned from new taxes.  New housing fuels the need for more teachers, new schools, new road maintenance, more police and other expensive municipal services.  Every new student in local school systems costs taxpayers over $8,000 a year
• A new road or a road expansion would be very expensive to build and then to maintain for many years, all at taxpayer expense. Such a project would contradict the State Plan, which aims to protect open space and to channel development into urban areas where infrastructure already exists.  According to the State Plan, much of the land in upper Passaic county is environmentally sensitive (Planning Area 5), for which the objectives should be "protecting environmental features, conserving natural resources and establishing infrastructure improvements which do not conflict with the environs."  A sprawl inducing road expansion would certainly conflict with the need to protect the heavily forested watershed lands of the region.
• There are numerous alternatives to new road construction, such as mass transit, intersection improvement, signal timing, etc., which have not been given serious consideration.  Recently, towns in Morris and Bergen counties have won federal dollars to begin jitney services that would shuttle commuters from their homes to bus or train stops. Much of the morning rush hour slowdown on Ringwood Avenue occurs because of cars backing up into Ringwood Avenue from the Haskell school driveway.  Surely the county and/or the borough can devise a more efficient system for student drop-off rather than building an expensive and destructive new road. Multi-lane through-roads, which typically have higher speed limits and restricted opportunities for turning into side streets, often have a seriously negative impact on local small businesses which get bypassed as traffic speeds to regional malls. The traffic "congestion" is not as bad as new road proponents would have you think.  While traffic is heavy at rush hours, it moves right along at other times.  Compare Ringwood Avenue to some of North Jersey's larger roads during rush hours.  Route 10 (which is twice as wide as Ringwood Avenue) in Morris county, for example, backs up to a crawl which stretches for miles, and the congestion begins before 7:00 in the morning.

For all of these reasons, Skylands CLEAN is adamantly opposed to any new road or road expansion in the Ringwood Avenue corridor.