Town that banned commuters
Leonia, NJ, bans out-of-town cars at rush hour. But can that be legal?
THOUSANDS of New Jersey drivers had the perfect way to shave time off their nightmare commute into the city — until the town they were using for the shortcut applied the brakes.
Tree-lined Leonia, in Bergen County, took the drastic step Monday of banning out-of-town motorists from its side streets during rush hour. Locals hail the move as necessary to curb the up to 12,000 additional cars a day that flooded its streets, but nonresident drivers are up in arms — and legal experts tell The Post the law will undoubtedly end up in a court battle.
“Leonia is illegally trying to expand their municipal jurisdiction, and they are attempting to legislate on matters that are normally within the purview of the state of New Jersey,” insisted Theodore Sl- iwinski, a lawyer in East Brunswick, NJ. “These new laws will definitely be challenged.’’
LEONIA officials say they were forced to enact the extraordinary law — which includes $200 fines for scofflaws — because navigation apps like Waze encouraged drivers to use the town’s side streets as a shortcut to the George Washington Bridge.
Locals complained that the traffic has been unbearable — with some unable to back out of their driveways — and downright dangerous.
Under the new law, about 60 Leonia streets will be closed to nonlocals daily from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., unless they can prove they have actual business in the area.
Residents and employees working in Leonia must display town-issued yellow hang tags in thetheir vehicles to access thehe side strstreets.
Three major thorough fares are sin the town — Fort Lee Road, Broad Avenue and Grandd Ave-Avenue — are exempt from thethe re-restrictions.
Although the regulationion is now officially in effect, thee town is providing a two-week “grace period” to nonresident commut-mmuters before slapping themm with the hefty fine if they ventureure onto the side streets dur--
[ The lelegislation is] wiwithout question questio legal. . — Leonia, NJ, MMayor Judah Ziegler l (left)left), on claims that his town’s new law will face court battles
ing the newly forbidden hours.
ON Monday, drivers trying to pass through the town were given warnings by authorities posted at checkpoints and redirected off residential streets.
“Everything we do, we want to be fair about it,” Leonia Police Chief Thomas Rowe said.
But driver Mike Helmsley, 57, of West New York, grumbled, “I think it’s bulls--t that I can’t take a public road. This is literally adding 35 minutes to my commute, and now I have to explain to my boss I’m late because they closed roads.”
Leonia has been working with Waze and Apple Maps so their apps reflect the fact that right turns from Fort Lee Road onto Station Parkway — which leads to residential streets — are noo longer allowed, said Leoniaa Mayor Judah Zeigler.
He complained that “on a normal day,” 4,000 vehicles have been passing through the town,n, which is home to about 9,2000 residents.
“If it’s a bad day, we gett 12,000,” he said, adding that the congestion was once so bad that a crossing guard was forced to “jump in front of a child to stop traffic.”
Rowe added that with only 18 cops, the town’s police force can’t handle the influx of cars.
“It’s dangerous,” he said. “We already had a woman run down during these hours, and we’re taking action to make sure that never happens again.”
Zeigler insisted the legislation, which he signed into law last month, is “without question legal.”
He pointed to a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled Arlington County in Virginia could prevent nonresidents from parking in a local neighborhood.
“[The decision] gives municipalities the right to legislate access to streets under its control as long as the laws don’t allow some residents and not others (and ours don’t), and as long as the law serves a public purpose (in this case, public safety),” Ziegler wrote in an e-mail to The Post.
BUT some traffic experts are skeptical.
“Parking is a different situation, so for them to make that claim is really a tough sell,’’ said Stephen Carrellas, the coordinator of the New Jersey chapter of the National Motorists Association.
“Even if it’s their town, it’s still a public road, and it’s still a tough nut to crack to claim that other people can’t use it.”
Sam Schwartz, a former New York City transportation official, called it a “slippery slope.”
“Public thoroughfares are public thoroughfares, and they cannot be closed to the general public,” he said.
“Residential parking is completely different than the ability to traverse a street. A thorough- fare implies that people can go through.”
Robert Sinclair, a spokesman for AAA Northeast, said the measures likely wouldn’t fly in the Big Apple because “numerous” New York legal cases “prohibit local municipalities from doing what they’ve unilaterally done in Leonia.”
One of those cases is a New York state appeals-court ruling in 1954 that said the Town of North Hempstead, LI, couldn’t prohibit “through or transient vehicular traffic” on streets within a residential area.
The town was trying to fight back against a flood of employees at a local factory who commuted via its roads to get to work. One of the factory workers sued — and the court sided with the employee.
North Hempstead’s traffic measures were “designed merely to reserve the streets in the area for the use of the local residents to the exclusion of the public at large. To do so would be an unreasonable exercise of power to regulate traffic,” the court ruled.
Many Leonia residents applauded the new legislation, saying they’ve been suffering for far too long.
“Sometimes when the street gets backed up, you can’t get out because you have to wait for someone to let you out,” said Joe Riley, 67.
Leonia isn’t the first place to take active steps to combat appinduced traffic.
In 2016, the city of Fremont, Calif., worked with Waze to enact left- and right-turn restrictions on some residential streets during the rush hour to prevent commuters from clogging up local neighborhoods.