Residents implore mayor to install speed bumps

My wife and I and our two young children moved to Leedsville Drive in Lincroft two years ago. Lincroft is appealing for a number of reasons. It is an uncomplicated and pleasant mix of family residences and basic services, with good schools and access to many modes of transportation. We’ve been proven right in believing it would be an ideal place to live and raise our kids — with one unexpected exception. Excessive vehicular speeding on Leedsville Drive is a chronic and significant danger. It is a serious problem requiring meaningful action to fix.

Leedsville is not like other streets in the local neighborhoods. It shares a speed limit of 25 mph, the common and sensible guideline for an area populated almost exclusively by residences. But there the similarities end. Leedsville’s size and shape is rare for a neighborhood street.

It’s nearly a mile long, unusually wide, with only two bisecting cross streets, and has generally good sight lines to oncoming traffic. It is used as a cut-through from Route 520 to West Front Street and Middletown-Lincroft Road by drivers seeking to avoid the traffic lights and stop signs of other primary routes. Unfortunately, these are the characteristics that allow and encourage high rates of speed by impatient drivers who see an opportunity to shorten their trip time.

A casual observer would be astonished by the high number and breathtaking speed of many of the cars traveling on Leedsville Drive.

Recently, the Middletown Police Department installed speed strips to record and measure vehicular behavior on Leedsville Drive. They showed conclusively and dramatically that the average speed for all vehicles on the street well-exceeded 25 mph and, with frightening frequency, many cars doubled that speed.

This situation endangers daily the families who reside on Leedsville Drive, many with children, and all others who travel it by car, bike and foot.

While we appreciate the efforts of police to enforce the speed limit, we require a permanent solution. Speed "humps" — gentle increases and decreases in the street’s surface elevation — are the answer. They do not impede the movement of emergency vehicles, nor obstruct snow plowing and debris removal. But they strongly discourage unsafe rates of car speed, and effectively remind drivers of the legal limit at which they can operate their vehicle.

The families who live on Leedsville — by virtue of a speed limit of 25 mph — deserve to have the same peace of mind had by their neighbors who live on streets whose location and configuration naturally slow the rate of cars passing their homes.

That peace of mind, and increased safety to our physical well-being, can be had by bringing speed humps to Leedsville Drive.

We ask and hope Mayor Joan Smith and the government of Middletown do all they are able to install speed humps on Leedsville Drive and eliminate the one important exception to making Lincroft an ideal place to live and raise our children.

Chris Snyder

Lincroft section of Middletown