Traffic grinds to a halt for miles during rush hour
ROBBINSVILLE -- The holiday rush is under way at Amazon's 1.2 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Robbinsville.
Bins full of orders move along 14 miles of conveyor belts, but outside, traffic grinds to a halt for miles when more than 4,000 employees are going in and out during rush hour.
"Since this holiday season, it's gotten horrendous," said Debbie Lange, whose Lynwood Estates neighborhood in Upper Freehold bears the brunt of the traffic gridlock. "It's really bad."
School buses get caught up in the traffic, kids who drive to school arrive late and it has become nearly impossible to get in and out of the neighborhood that sits across the street from the Gordon Road entrance.
Lange said the drive to Allentown High School would normally take four minutes, but is now a half-hour.
Another resident, Robert Lerman, said it can take as long as 40 minutes to move three-quarters of a mile. When his wife drops off their sons at sports practice, a 10-minute round trip has now become a 35- to 40-minute drive.
"This could be solved if they would move the shifts, but they've got it right in the middle of rush hour when people are trying to go to work or come home," he said. "The quality of life has been destroyed."
Even Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried acknowledged that it was unacceptable.
"If I were a resident on Gordon Road or in Upper Freehold, I would not be happy," he said. "It's hard to get off their street and we need to make it better."
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2015/06/a_look_inside_the_new_amazon_fulfillment_center_in.html
He told residents in a statement Tuesday that finding a solution to the traffic congestion on I-195, Gordon Road and Routes 539 and 526 is of "utmost importance" and that the township is working with officials from Amazon, Upper Freehold, Monmouth and Mercer counties and the state Department of Transportation to find a remedy.
On Wednesday, Fried, Council President Ron Witt, police brass and township engineer Tim McGough will meet with Amazon's senior management to discuss both short- and long-term solutions -- among them being adjusting the timing of traffic lights, enforcing park-and-ride programs for employees, changing shift schedules and adding more lanes and roads.
The number of Amazon employees is more than double than what was originally approved, Fried said. They work four 10-hour days on two shifts.
"We have a system that was built for a number of cars and it's twice as many cars," he said. "It wasn't built to handle that much volume."
Most concerning, though, is the accident count has risen 300 percent, he said.
Starting last week, Robbinsville posted five officers for two-and-a-half hours every morning and night to direct traffic and manipulate the lights -- a cost that is being paid by Amazon, Fried said.
The original traffic pattern called for employees to take Exit 8 off Interstate 195, drive north onto Route 539 and make a left into the warehouse.
But now, they're routed further down to Gordon Road and employees leaving their shift make a right onto Route 539 to get onto the highway.
"We tried to see if changing the traffic pattern would help ... but it's still not good enough," Fried said. "There's still too many cars and it's still not working efficiently."
The only solution, he says, would be for Amazon to change or stagger the shifts -- and he's hopeful they'll listen.
The warehouse will be busy every holiday season and a permanent solution needs to be found.
Lerman said it's unfair to Upper Freehold residents who have to deal with the traffic nightmares but don't get the benefits of the tax ratables. He worries that should there be an emergency, an ambulance would have trouble getting to his house or they would be unable to rush to the hospital in a car.
He said Amazon employees should instead use Exit 7 through Robbinsville -- "It's affecting those who don't vote for the people in Robbinsville" -- but Fried said having them wind through another three miles of backroads wouldn't help the situation.
It seems that more than a decade ago, the Lynwood Estate residents had anticipated the problems that would come. A group of them, calling themselves Residents for Smart Growth, filed suit in 2002 hoping to stop Matrix Development Group from building the 5.6 million-square-foot warehouse park, but lost.
"We told them this was going to happen, that traffic was going to back up," Lerman said. "Now you see the result."
An email to Amazon seeking comment was not immediately returned.
Cristina Rojas may be reached at crojas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaRojasTT. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.