Surray Luggage has been dark this week, with signs touting an inventory closeout. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Has Surray Luggage gone on a trip?

The Red Bank luggage retailer’s Broad Street store has been dark for a week, with signs hinting vaguely of change.

Window signs posted a week ago tout an inventory liquidation sale, but the store has remained closed without explanation.

Repeated efforts to contact business owner John Smigler or anyone at the store have gone undesponded to.

Surray, long entrenched at 123-127 Broad, relocated to its present address across the street five years ago. As previously reported by Churn, the space it vacated is slated to become home to Salon Concrete hair styling.

Wednesday’s Star-Ledger has a quirky story about what happens to all those New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway tollbooths after they’re decommissioned by E-Z Pass technology.

They’re put out to pasture in a yard near the Asbury Toll Plaza in Tinton Falls, the Sledger reports.

From the Sledger article, by Mike Franinelli:

“They call it the Tollbooth Graveyard,” said Bob Quirk, who has spent a career in and around tollbooths, first as a collector who breathed fumes and made change at Exit 14C on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1978, and now as director of tolls for the Turnpike and Parkway.

As they decide whether to hit the cash or E-ZPass express lanes, drivers wouldn’t necessarily notice the resting place for tollbooths in the shadows of the busy plaza.

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Parkway and Turnpike, will one day have to figure out what to do with the highway boxes that became casualties when one-way tolling arrived on certain sections of the Parkway.

For now, similar to a dearly departed organ donor providing body parts for the still-living, tollbooths in the graveyard can be scavenged by Parkway maintenance workers for, among other useful parts, their windows and air conditioning and stainless-steel “Dutch doors” that were at the waist level of toll collectors.

In addition, some of the 32 tollbooths in the graveyard could be resurrected with new paint and parts if other toll booths on the Parkway become severely damaged.

“If, God forbid, something were to happen to the toll plaza and a whole booth went out or something, it would be easy to rig one of these up to put in,” said Tom Feeney, a spokesman for Turnpike Authority.

More here.

Melgar was reported to have jumped off the platform in front of a northbound train as it was pulling into the station at 9:15 p.m., according to New Jersey Transit spokesman John Durso Jr.

“The train was entering the station, so it was going at a slow rate of speed,” Durso tells redbankgreen.

Durso said the train’s engineer saw the victim walk from the vicinity of a ticket-vending machine on the eastern platform and leap in front of the engine. Emergency stopping measures were unable to halt the train in time, he said.

Volunteer fire and first aid responders found Melgar lodged under the train on the westerly rail near the rear of the engine. Durso said he suffered a fractured skull and fractures to his arms and legs.

Melgar’s condition was not immediately avaialble.

About 40 passengers on the train were transferred to another train, Durso said. The one that struck the victim remained in the station until about 11 p.m. while an investigation was conducted, Durso said.

By JOHN T. WARD

A new bridge to replace the Route 520 span between Rumson and Sea Bright is among the options on the table for review and discussion next Monday.

Monmouth County officials plan to hold two public information sessions that day to get input on whether to rehabilitate or replace the bascule span over the Shrewsbury River.

Here’s an announcement from the county:

On Monday, Feb. 27, Monmouth County will hold two public meetings about the status of the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge (S-32) over the Shrewsbury River between Rumson and Sea Bright:

• A daytime meeting will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Sea Bright Municipal Building public meeting room at 1167 Ocean Ave. in Sea Bright. A brief presentation will be held at 2 p.m.
• An evening meeting will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Rumson Municipal Building public meeting room at 80 E. River Rd. in Rumson. A brief presentation will be held at 7 p.m.

“The bridge that connects Sea Bright and Rumson is being evaluated for possible rehabilitation or replacement,” Freeholder Deputy Director Thomas A. Arnone said. “Citizen participation at these meetings will be helpful in developing a detailed evaluation of this bridge and allow the county to outline the options under consideration.”

Both meetings will be conducted in an “open house” format where display boards will provide information about the current bridge. Representatives from the Monmouth County Division of Engineering will be on hand to answer questions and to explain the evaluation process to residents, local officials and the business community.

“These meetings are part of a local concept development study,” said county Engineer Joseph Ettore. “This is the beginning of a detailed process to determine if the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge should be rehabilitated, replaced or kept as is.”

For those unable to attend and provide comment at the meetings, the county will accept written comments through March 28, 2012.

Written comments should be sent by email to engineer@co.monmouth.nj.us, by fax to 732-431-7765 or by mail to Inkyung Englehart, Project Coordinator, Monmouth County Department of Public Works, Division of Engineering, Hall of Records Annex, 1 East Main St, 3rd Floor, Freehold, NJ  07728. A downloadable comment form and project information is posted on the Public Works and Engineering section of the county Web site at www.visitmonmouth.com

By JOHN T. WARD

Fingers crossed, but so far, the repair job on the Oceanic Bridge over the Navesink River between Middletown and Rumson is going like clockwork, thanks to relatively mild winter weather.

Monmouth County officials said the bridge, closed since October, is on schedule to reopen in time for the start of the summer season Memorial Day weekend.

“They’ve been fortunate with the weather,” said Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl.

The work is focused on the 100-foot-long steel bascule portion of the 2,700-foot-long span – the county’s longest – that opens for marine traffic.  Work crews have been removing, repairing and replacing everything from giant support beams to the machinery that opens the bridge to the catwalks.

From an announcement by the county press office:

During the second full month of the closure, the contractor removed and replaced two major floor beams on the north leaf of the bascule span and reinforced the east and west girders. The contractor also completed the installation of a temporary platform on the south leaf’s bascule in preparation of rehabilitation of that span.

On the north leaf, approximately 95 percent of the existing components have been cleaned and primed; some areas have also been painted. Painting work has been stopped for the winter and will resume when structural repairs, stringer and grating deck installation are completed. During the cleaning process, 10 55-gallon drums of rust and paint chips were removed from the north and south spans. Mechanical work to various components of bridge machinery continues to be repaired off-site.

“This project is continuing on schedule,” [Freeholder John] Arnone said. “This winter, so far, has been relatively mild so that work crews have been able to keep working schedule and we are proceeding toward an on-time re-opening prior to Memorial Day weekend.”

The repairs are expected to extend the life of the bridge, built in 1939, by about eight years. In the interim, plans for a replacement structure, which may include a controversial fixed-span bridge 65 feet above the river, are in the works.

TEXT

By JOHN T. WARD

After more than 350 years of rather quiet contentment in Little Silver, Sickles Market is taking it to the old country.

The market, whose roots on the same Rumson Road property date back to a farm started in 1660, is organizing an October tour of gardens, cheese-making shops, olive pressers and other artisanal food producers on the Italian island.

For $6,000 per person, up to 12 travelers will get to indulge in “an exclusive insider’s culinary and cultural view of Italy,” says says Kirsty Dougherty, who was hired recently as Sickles’ director of tourism training..

That’s right: Sickles is in the travel biz now. Dougherty says the idea for the foodie tours grew out of store owner Bob Sickles’ own global jaunts to find new products and supply lines for his increasingly international market – à la the Tunisian condiments rolled out at the store two years ago.

Sickles plans to run three trips to differing regions of Italy in 2013, Dougherty.

“These are very much food lovers’ tours,” Dougherty tells redbankgreen. With their behind-the-scenes focus on food from where it’s grown to the plate, the excursions “are targeted at the gourmet palate,” she says.

The October tour, led by Sicilian food broker Gioacchino Passalacqua, includes nine nights of luxury hotel stays; chartered bus travel to and around Palermo and two other cities; meals at “hand-picked” farms, chocolatiers, restaurants and more. Airfare is not included. Take it here for complete details.

By JOHN T. WARD

A North Jersey Coast Line train struck the the driver’s side of a car at a grade crossing in Red Bank Monday evening.

But the car’s driver, after being carefully extricated and readied for transport to a hospital, walked out of an ambulance refusing treatment, a witness tells redbankgreen.

The collision occurred at about 7:40 p.m. at the grade crossing at Drs. James Parker Boulevard, also known as West Bergen Place, near Maple Avenue.

It involved an Audi traveling eastbound on Parker and a southbound local to Long Branch, which was just leaving the Red Bank station less than a mile away, according to Nichelle Mountain of Oakhurst, who witnessed the crash as she sat at a red light on the opposite side of Maple Avenue.

“The gates were coming down, and the train kept beeping and beeping its horn, but she kept coming,” Mountain told redbankgreen.

Mountain said she saw the train plow into the car, but with less explosive force than she had anticipated, probably because the train had not attained much speed leaving the station.

The car appeared to have barely been moved down the tracks from the crossing lane, but it left the lead car of the train pressed up against the motor vehicle’s left side.

The driver, whose identity was not immediately available, was moved to a gurney by volunteer fire and first aid workers. But moments later, she was on her feet, refusing treatment, a witness said.

An official account of the accident was not immediately available.

A push to make Red Bank’s streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians moved from the conceptual to the actual as workers installed markings on Chestnut Street Tuesday morning.

Eight so-called “sharrows,” depicting a bicycle beneath two directional arrows, were painted onto the freshly paved street, where eight street signs were also to be installed.

The dual-approach signage “just reminds motorists that they’re sharing the road with bikes,” said Jenny Rossano, of Safe Routes Red Bank, an advocacy group that lobbied for the markings. “It’s not a separate bike lane.”The installation signals the start of what is expected to be a gradual implementation of recommendations for improving biking and walking safety in Red Bank contained in a study completed earlier this year by urban engineering consultants. Since then, the borough council has adopted the report, and the planning board has moved toward folding it into the town’s master plan.

“The idea isn’t to cover the town in these” but to mark major east-west and north-south corridors, and to function as both safety reminders and wayfaring indicators, Rossano said.

Christine Ballard of T&M Associates, the town’s engineering consultant, said the signage on Chestnut Street came about when officials realized that a recent repaving of the street under the the borough’s annual roads program was coming in under budget. The markings were added at a cost of about $5,000, she estimated, though she did not have figures handy Tuesday. The inclusion, she said, did not put the job over budget.

“The council members felt this was a good step to show appreciation for Red Bank Safe Routes, which had lobbied for the study, and also to show that the report should not just get stuck on a shelf,” Ballard said.

Ballard said a bike lane was considered for Chestnut, but ruled out, because it would have required residents and visitors to park on one side only.

But Bridge Avenue, which the study also zeroed in on, is wide enough for a dedicated bike lane without having any impact on parking, she said.

Bridge and Peters Place are under consideration as the next streets to be marked, though Ballard said the police department is concerned that Peters may not be suitable for bike traffic because it’s a part-time one-way for school traffic and is narrow. No decisions have been made about either, she said.

Further down the road, the replacement for Hubbards Bridge, connecting Red Bank and Middletown via West Front Street, has been designed by Monmouth County engineers – at the urging of town officials – to accommodate a bike lane, Ballard said. She noted, though, that lane markings may not be possible until a solution is found to the narrow width of the rail trestle that serves as the gateway at the Red Bank side.

Construction on the bridge is expected to begin next spring.

The planning board is expected to vote Monday on whether to recommend the report be folded into the town’s master plan. Here’s the full report in PDF format. It’s a sizable file, so be patient while it downloads.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

In addition to a powerhouse fireworks show, one guarantee for Sunday’s KaBoom event in Red Bank is the logjam of crowds and traffic that comes with it.

Tens of thousands of visitors stream into town by car, rail, on foot and by bike. Gridlock on the periphery of the central business district is likely before the show. Your “secret” path out of town afterward? Forget about it. It’s taillight city everywhere.

Below is a comprehensive rundown on what to expect, where to go and how to get in and out of town with the same amount of hair you came with.

• If you plan to drive, expect to get into Red Bank early or burn through a lot of $3.75-a-gallon gas sitting in traffic.

The borough will shut down road access to Marine Park at 5 a.m. Sunday, and surrounding streets of Wharf Avenue, Boat Club Lane and Union Street will be closed at 4 p.m.

Vehicular access to the downtown will be closed off at 6 p.m. No cars will be allowed north of Harding Road/Reckless Place between Maple Avenue and Spring Street until the fireworks are over. Even then, one- to two-hour delays are likely, an advisory from the borough said.

• All municipal parking lots will be open and free of charge for visitors. Downtown parking garages at The Globe Court, 141 West Front Street (next to Pazzo MMX) and the John E. Day Funeral Home on Riverside Avenue will also be open. For a $10 donation, visitors may park at the Two River Theater lot or at the Red Bank Middle School, where a $10 donation goes toward an effort to create a summer soccer camp.

• Taking the train is highly recommended, organizers say. To make it easier, NJ Transit is offering discounted tickets, at $5 round-trip, to anyone traveling the North Jersey Coast Line, which runs from Bay Head to Matawan/Aberdeen. The transit authority will run extra trains in and out of Red Bank the day of the show, but there may still be delays, according to its website.

A full train schedule can be viewed at www.njtransit.com

“It’ll be faster, quicker and easier,” to take the train, said KaBoom spokeswoman Judy Musa. “You won’t be sitting there cursing a steering wheel.”

• The weatherbot says there’s a chance or rain or even thunderstorms Sunday night, but because of the logistics and manpower needed to pull of the event, the July 4 rain date will be invoked only in the event of “extreme circumstances.” If there is inclement weather, officials will wait for a break in the cloud cover and go forward with the show. For more information on the day of the  show, call 732.345.0885, visit the Kaboom website or tune in to radio station Q104.3, which is broadcasting the fireworks. Do not call the police station for fireworks info; the department needs to keep the lines open for emergencies.

• After the show, what’s the rush? Monday’s a holiday, there will be post-show live music in the parks and many downtown bars and restaurants will be open. Stick around and let others curse their steering wheels.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

A hydraulic oil spill from a garbage truck has shutdown some of Little Silver’s heavily traveled roads and prompted multiple detours throughout the borough.

The spill, reported at about 11:10 a.m. Tuesday, came from an M&S Waste Services garbage truck, which was traveling from Fair Haven. It leaked oil through the heart of the business district, all the way from Church Street, onto Prospect Avenue and just past Sycamore Avenue to Hickory Lane, Police Chief Dan Shaffery told redbankgreen.

Those roads are partially closed while local and Monmouth County workers lay down absorbents to dry out the roadways, he said.

“It’s like an ice rink out there,” Shaffery said.

No accidents were reported, but the hasty detours are backing up traffic throughout town, Shaffery said.

The borough’s public works department has laid down Speedy Dry, a chemical absorbent, and police are trying to obtain a sand truck from the county to dry the roads, Shaffery said.

Shaffery anticipates the detours to stay in effect for at least another hour.

“It’s a huge inconvenience,” he said, “but if we open up the roads, cars are going to go sideways.”