Westfield Council Looking to Fix Troubled Intersection of North Ave. & Tuttle

WESTFIELD, NJ — There may be a light the end of the tunnel for those hoping for a safer experience at North Avenue and Tuttle Parkway. The town council voted to approve a resolution supporting a grant application for the improvement of the intersection at Tuesday’s meeting.

“[Police] Chief [Christopher] Battiloro can tell you this is one of our more heavily travelled intersections and we have a lot of accidents there — all different types of accidents,” Westfield Town Administrator Jim Gildea said at the meeting.

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Gildea noted that the intersection has been the site of pedestrian fatalities in the past, as well as a recent incident where a vehicle crashed into a house .

Because the intersection is on a county road, it’s actually Union County that is applying for the grant, according to Gildea.

“Our letter to them last year was to review the intersection for traffic safety improvements,” Gildea said. The town had provided data to the county supporting the request, he said.

Union County is now in turn applying for a federal Safe Routes for All grant through the New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority .

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“We’ve gotten these grants before for the Rahway Avenue Lamberts Mill traffic light , for the West Broad Street and Scotch Plains Avenue traffic light, for the traffic improvements on East Broad Street and Elm Street years ago,” Gildea said.

Westfield has implemented traffic flow updates for several intersections this year, most recently at Boulevard and Grove Street.

Each of these changes has brought both praise from residents in the immediate vicinity of the intersections as well as skepticism from other town residents in frequent social media posts.

Gildea indicated that the grant application would be submitted soon.

“I talked to the county engineer today and told him the motion is being considered tonight. We’ll send it to him tomorrow and the application I think is going in next week,” Gildea said.

Gildea cautioned, though, that the updates would require a multi-year effort, as the county has to conduct its own traffic study.

“If they get the money, they’ll come back to us and it will be a public process to go through and it will be a multi-year process,” he said.

The resolution was approved unanimously by the full town council.

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