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« on: January 11, 2010, 11:21:04 AM »
The Board of Adjustment hearing on the LTACH was devoted to questions about the impact of traffic and parking. The public questioned the applicant’s traffic expert and there were several issues of concern that were raised.
The traffic engineer testified that he was not able to find a comparable facility, LTACH, dialysis and adult day care all in one building, and that required information dealing with number of employees for each activity and their shifts, hours of operation for each facility as well as number of deliveries, vans, ambulances, etc was all provided by the applicant. This raised concerns because the applicant’s facility, Prospect Heights, has significantly less parking than necessary and delivery vans have limited access to the building on Prospect Avenue. There was also concern that Prospect Heights’ employees that now park off site will utilize the LTACH garage reducing the available parking. The traffic engineer had not considered this anticipate problem.
The other major issue was the impact of the additional traffic on the existing situation on Summit and Prospect Avenues. The engineer had never visited the site during the morning hours and was apparently unaware of the long lines of traffic at the traffic lights at the four controlled intersections studied. The engineer was clearly of the opinion that there was so much traffic already on Summit and Prospect Avenues that the additional traffic projected from the new facility would have little impact. Questions raised by Summit Avenue residents who testified there were times they could not exit their driveway because of the continuous line of cars in the street were not addressed. The ability of delivery vans to access the LTACH were of concern to the residents on Prospect Avenue because it would require traffic to be stopped to allow the vans to enter the driveway. Stopping traffic on Prospect Avenue, which is used by many emergency vehicles, was of no concern to the engineer.
The Board of Adjustments expects to have an additional traffic report by their traffic expert available for the next meeting in February.