The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Reducing the number of lanes on part of Hamilton Street from four to three, and making Home Street a one-lane street to ease turns onto Hamilton, were two of the many safety improvements to part of Hamilton discussed at a March 12 public information session in the Township Council chambers.
The $4.5 million, federally funded improvements are targeted to a 1.7-mile stretch of the County road, from Vanderbilt Avenue to the New Brunswick border.
On hand to brief the public on the proposed improvements were representatives from the Somerset County engineering department, T&M Associates, the New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority and the state Department of Transportation.
The project is now in the design phase, which is expected to conclude this year. Next comes an environmental review, which is expected to last through 2026.
Following that is the project’s final design, expected to be completed in 2028. Construction on the project is expected to start in 2029.
The project is split into two parts, with Franklin Boulevard being the dividing line, said Bruce Klein of T&M Associates, the project’s manager.
Klein said that corridor ranked as the 11th-worst in Somerset County for accidents, based on 2023 data, which is the reason it was placed on a state list for improvement.
One thing the project will do is upgrade traffic signals at intersections such as Franklin Boulevard, and Matilda, Baier and Highland avenues, he said.
“The project is going to look to update those, bring them up to current standards and do some extra safety improvements there,” he said.
The project will also put part of Hamilton, with four lanes of traffic, on a “road diet,” Klein said.
“A road diet is basically taking something from four lanes down to three lanes,” he said. “So you’re minimizing the amount of lanes, minimizing the conflicts, and it increases visibility of vehicles and pedestrians.”
“So everybody is traveling one lane,” he said. “There’s less weaving of cars and positioning for really, to be honest, getting over to the Franklin Boulevard traffic signal.”
“And they’ll have very good visibility of a single lane of traffic,” Klein said. “That’s another thing that’s a big improvement to having those four lanes. We get some shoulders out of it because we have some space.”
Home Street, he said, “stuck out a little bit because there’s a lot of crashes there, a lot more than many of the other streets that seem similar, so we wanted to kind of focus in on Home Street and see if there’s something that we can do there to improve the safety at that location. That’s a lot of where those right-angle crashes were occurring.”
Home Street is a one-way street that currently has a left-turn lane and a straight through and right turn lane, he said. That causes sight problems of oncoming traffic when two cars are side-by-side at the intersection, he said.
“We’re going to take Home Street and make it a single-lane road so that way when you get up to the stop sign, you don’t have somebody right next to you who’s looking to also come out and make a left or go straight or make a right-hand turn,” he said.
Other strategies that will be followed include expanding crosswalks, creating pedestrian islands in the middle of Hamilton Street, installing traffic lights with reflectorized backings for easier visibility and installing large, rectangular flashing signs to indicate when pedestrians are in the crosswalks, he said.
Street striping to indicate no parking at certain corners will also be used, as will the creation of new ADA parking spaces, Klein said.
The NJTPA has 10 working projects currently in the federal process, four of which are in Franklin, said Abeer Al-Shammari, from the Somerset County Department of Engineering and Planning.
The other three projects in Franklin are the New Brunswick Road bridge replacement, the Easton Avenue and DeMott Lane intersection improvement, and the Easton Avenue corridor improvement from Franklin Boulevard-Landing Lane to Worlds Fair Drive, she said.
“We are committed to improving the safety of the local and regional roads under our jurisdiction,” she said.
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