Dramatic changes for 70?
By JENNIFER KELLEY
Cherry Hill Sun
8/2/2007

While residents can currently view the Route 70 Task Force Report in video form on the township’s Web site, Cherry Hill officials, including Mayor Bernie Platt, will soon make their way through the community with presentations on the report’s findings.

The report was presented to Platt and sent to the New Jersey Department of Transportation earlier this month. The state agency, which is responsible for the highway, is currently reviewing the series of proposals put forth by the task force, NJDOT spokeswoman Erin Phalon said.

The 14-member group of residents, hand-picked by Platt from the communities residing along the state road, compiled the document during a series of meetings that spanned about two months. The task force’s proposal detailed dramatic changes to the barren, dilapidated highway, including contiguous brick sidewalks and crosswalks, decorative lighting and a canopy of 1,000 trees lining Route 70 from the Pennsauken border to Cherry Hill’s boundary with Marlton.

But the far-reaching vision also involves a controversial proposal – widening the highway to three lanes in either direction for its entire 8.3-mile stretch through the township.

The widening would mainly affect the Erlton, Barclay Farm and Wexford Leas neighborhoods, as it is in those sections that the road narrows to two lanes.

Erlton South Civic Association president Phil Guerrieri, who is running against Platt in the upcoming Council election, said that while the report indicates that task force members reached a consensus on the proposals prior to its submission to Platt and the state, he and a few other members, such as Erlton South representative Ramin Abbaszadeh, never agreed that an additional lane should be carved out of the median in front of their respective neighborhoods.

“We don’t want a six-lane highway running 10 feet from houses, churches and businesses,” he said, adding that, “this task force was a charade.”

Guerrieri commended Platt for forming the group, noting, “It was a conversation that needed to be had,” but said he resented that widening the road to three consistent lane configurations in both directions seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

He also contended that Platt turned a good thing bad by rushing the report to the state without presenting it to township residents beforehand and taking their comments and concerns into consideration.

Earlier this year, Guerrieri presented the tentative task-force proposal to members of the Erlton South Civic Association at a special meeting. Hundreds of the neighborhood’s residents overwhelmingly voted against the plan, mainly because of the widening component. In a meeting held a few weeks later, Erlton North’s civic group reacted similarly.

Erlton residents argue that expanding Route 70, which gets about 60,000 vehicles a day, would destroy neighborhoods along the roadway. Many said it would also attract more motorists looking to pass through Cherry Hill as quickly as they can, as the perpetually congested state highway is the main artery connecting Philadelphia to the suburbs of South Jersey.

But the majority of task force members came to agree on the recommendations by the time the report was presented to Platt and Council, said the group’s chairman, Barclay Farm resident Robert Saldutti.

“I feel we presented a vision for the entire township – the building of a boulevard that is reflective of how we’ve grown as a community,” he said. “Nothing like this exists right now – the landscaping, the buried electric lines, the walkways. (If implemented), it will make a significant mark on Cherry Hill.”

Saldutti noted that Route 70 in its current form is not reflective of “the great town that Cherry Hill is. We need to embrace the area it runs through – this is not a road project; this is a centerpiece for our town.”

He added that what the task force does not want is another Admiral Wilson Boulevard.

“We want a managed roadway that kids can ride bikes near and pedestrians can safely cross. We have not proposed a widening project; rather, it’s about getting rid of choke points along the road.”

Some residents who have viewed the plan do not see the expansion of Route 70 as an improvement in safety.

“When the road gets narrower in certain parts, drivers slow down,” said fellow Barclay Farm resident Roxane Shinn. “It’s called ‘traffic calming,’ and it’s a known safety initiative.”

Shinn, along with husband Robert, is in the process of forming her own coalition of residents to study the highway, calling the group the Committee for a Safer Route 70. She contends it will be more representative of all the Cherry Hill communities that dot the corridor.

“We’ll be putting forth decisions based on facts and traffic studies – not promises made on concepts that haven’t been tested on real roads,” she told The Sun. “I don’t get any indication from reading the (Route 70 Task Force Report) that there was a critical analysis done on any of the aspects the plan proposed,” Shinn added.

For his part, Platt was pleased with the report.

“I told the task force members to think outside the box when forming their recommendations and to put everything they hoped for the roadway into it, and that’s exactly what they did,” he said.

While Platt noted Route 70 is a state highway and, in the end, NJDOT has the ultimate say on what changes are made, he said it was important for Cherry Hill to express its desires prior to NJDOT’s planning process for the future of the road.

He estimated that the ambitious proposal could cost “a couple hundred million dollars” if the township gets everything it wants, such as synchronized traffic lights, ample stacking lanes for left-hand turns and all utility lines buried underground.

Task force member Gaytana Pino, of the Wexford Leas community, was also happy with the way the final report came out.

“It was a concerted effort of people working together to put forth what we considered to be the best thing for Cherry Hill,” she said, adding, “We have to look at the future. It’s naïve to think that a road that’s having so many problems now will not have even more problems in five, 10 or 15 years.

“While we might not get everything we want from the state, I guarantee they won’t give us anything if we don’t ask for it.”