Say goodbye to that weird little jog into the right lane: the left-turn lane from southbound Broad Street into Linden Place in Red Bank was removed Tuesday.
The turning lane was created in the early 1990s, when the one-way direction of Linden Place was reversed to flow east-to-west, police Chief Darren McConnell told redbankgreen earlier this year. (Because of an unexplained oversight, the lane was not codified as legit until an ordinance amendment by the borough council in 2015.)
McConnell said the lane was more nuisance than solution, as drivers continuing south on Broad had to veer into the right lane, even when no vehicles were turning into Linden. And that was the case the case most of the time, he said.
After a four-day test involving traffic cones, the RBPD traffic unit determined that eliminating the dedicated lane would not cause any traffic or safety issues, McConnell said. The borough council agreed, and in January, voted to eliminate the turning lane.
McConnell told redbankgreen on Tuesday that he doesn’t expect the change to result in two lanes of traffic now having to merge, because there’s only one through-lane as southbound Broad crosses Monmouth Street. “We’ll keep an eye on it, but I think drivers will barely notice the difference,” he said.
In conjunction with the lane elimination, two new parking spaces on the west side of Broad were created, said John Garofalo, a borough resident whose company, Alert Traffic Lines, did the work. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
