How Leonia found smooth sailing with its last-ditch traffic fix to stop bridge commuters

After enduring years of gridlock, the tiny town near the George Washington Bridge finally began shedding its image as the nation’s most popular shortcut last week by posting Do Not Enter signs on 60 of its side streets and dispatching police to enforce the signs.

By Tuesday, traffic in Leonia was unusually smooth for one of the first times in a very long time.

“Even I couldn’t believe it!” exclaimed Police Chief Tom Rowe, one of the architects of this last-ditch strategy. "Traffic flow got better and better as the week wore on.”

The chief wasn't the only traffic watcher to be surprised by a strategy that quickly forced thousands of Manhattan-bound motorists to recognize that the usual smartphone app they’d been using for years had radically changed — a factor that no longer made it practical for them to abandon Route 95 at rush hour in favor of the borough’s residential streets.

Rowe and Mayor Judah Zeigler were fielding calls all week from peers, civil engineers and commuters from all over the country. How had they managed this feat? Might it be repeated elsewhere? Was it legal to bar non-residents from local streets? Were there exemptions for legitimate visitors to Leonia?

And might Leonia’s relatively simple strategy add impetus to more complex traffic-reduction methods?

Short of a court fight, all these questions may not be completely answered for years.

Indeed, Leonia isn’t the first New Jersey municipality to consider barring outsiders since global positioning systems and smartphone navigational apps began guiding commuters and delivery trucks away from busy major arteries to once-quiet residential streets.

Lyndhurst and Ho-Ho-Kus

In the last decade, for example, police in at least two communities tried to discourage digital map providers from sending trucks onto residential streets — Kingsland Avenue in Lyndhurst and Powderhorn Road in Ho-Ho-Kus. In each case, the companies demurred. Leonia police made similar inquiries, too.

Besides making requests to the technology firms, Leonia officials asked for help from the two big government agencies whose roadways contribute most of the traffic leading to the Hudson River: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the world’s busiest bridge, and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which manages Route 95 from the GWB to Teaneck, where it links seamlessly with another interstate, Route 80.

“Sometimes when a big company relocates to a small town and the move creates traffic problems, the company hires its own security force to handle it so the town doesn’t have to shoulder all the burden,” Rowe noted. “Leonia doesn’t have a big police force — just 18 officers. Shouldn’t the public agencies take some financial responsibility for our extra traffic?”

Apparently not. Although all sides have discussed the issue, the borough hasn’t received any offers.

“You might as well be talking to a stone,” said former Leonia Mayor John DeSimone. “They talk you to death but do nothing.”

After Zeigler succeeded DeSimone and Rowe became the unpaid acting business manager for six months, the borough and its council realized that simply requesting help to alleviate incessant, overbearing traffic was ineffective.

“We had to solve this problem ourselves,” said Rowe. “We had to act.”

In municipal parlance, that meant a local law was necessary.

Changing algorithms

“Digital map providers won’t make any changes to their algorithms unless a town passes ordinances that automatically change their algorithms,” he said.

Leonia’s ordinances defined 60 local streets that cannot be entered by out-of-towners during morning and afternoon rush hours seven days a week. Residents, and municipal employees who live out of town, were exempted and given yellow tags so they could be easily identified. After a two-week warning period, others will be subject to a $200 fine for violating the law unless they can offer legitimate reasons for using a street.

Thoroughfares, such as Main Street and Grand Avenue, were not included in the ban because they’re main thoroughfares, not residential side streets.

Map providers didn’t object. Why should they? On Monday, an Apple Maps graphic advised motorists of the locations of all 60 Do Not Enter locations.

Waze lauded the initiative.

“The challenge of spreading congestion across available public roads, big and small, is a universal problem and one that existed long before GPS apps,” the popular mapping service said in a statement. “We applaud Leonia for taking steps to further manage the complicated needs of local commuters.”

Criticism and sarcasm

But social networks erupted with criticism.

“Really dumb,” wrote one woman. “It will stop when the local economy takes a hit.”

“Thank you, Leonia,” a Teaneck woman tweeted sarcastically. “Hope we can return the favor when it’s time to get to the malls at the holidays.”

“How does an out-of-towner do business there without a $200 fine?” asked another poster.

Even Rowe acknowledged that motorists will often lie to avoid tickets, “but our men are trained to spot the liars.”

As for the local economy suffering, he noted that the borough’s main streets, not residential side roads, contain most retail stores. Even DeSimone, the former mayor, who owns a hardware store, said sales during the first Monday of the borough’s campaign marked one of the most productive Mondays in several months.

“A lot of people in town don’t like the idea, but I do,” he said. “When you have that many cars every day, it’s dangerous. I worry about kids getting to school.”

But does an American town have the right to abridge the right-to-travel provision in the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause?

“Leonia has the right to manage its own streets, especially when there’s a serious safety issue involved,” Rowe said before citing an assortment of traffic tie-ups, crashes, fires and other emergencies that sometimes can delay emergency responders from saving lives and preventing injury and damage. “A lot of the objectors don’t live in places where traffic can get so heavy that it keeps somebody from leaving their house in the morning for more than an hour. Besides, there’s case law in New Jersey on this. We’re confident that the ordinance can withstand any challenge.”

No formal challenges have been raised so far. Maybe the time is right for this approach. Several years ago, Leonia took Fort Lee to court when the larger borough used the traffic argument for a strategy that turned Leonia residents away on Fort Lee Road when they tried to make their way home. A judge eventually modified the restriction.

But Fort Lee Road, which becomes Main Street in Leonia, didn’t involve residential side streets. And Fort Lee hasn’t raised any objections yet about Leonia’s strategy.

A Fort Lee benefit?

“Why should they?” said Rowe. “We’re taking vehicles off their streets, too.”

Keith Bendul, the Fort Lee chief, was noncommital.

“Chief Rowe has talked to us about this several times while the plan was being developed, and we’re hopeful that it’ll be beneficial for both towns,” Bendul said. “But there hasn’t been much of an impact yet [on Fort Lee]. It’s still a little too early to tell.”

Might other congested towns use the same strategy?

Rowe acknowledged that few communities, if any, fit Leonia’s “highly unusual, almost unique” set of circumstances.

“How many small towns are near the busiest bridge in the world while being sandwiched between some of the busiest, most crowded highways in the country?” he said.

More: Leonia's ban on commuter traffic along local roads: Is it legal?

Leonia road closures: 60 residential streets closed to commuters Monday morning

Road Warrior: How one man is working to curb pedestrian crashes

For the chief, the Leonia experiment shines a spotlight on other strategies for improving traffic flow: universal cashless tolls that move cars more quickly through tollbooths, and mass-transit alternatives for taking cars off congested highways.

“This experience once again illustrates how badly Bergen County needs a light-rail system that takes us past Tenafly to the New York State border,” he said.

Email: Cichowski@northjersey.com

