Academy Street Neighbors Seek Help from Village in Slowing Speeders

by Laura Griffin

Neighbors say the street is used as a cut through, especially with roadwork and traffic calming measures being put in on Valley Street, and the solar-powered speed radar signs aren’t making drivers slow down.

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Updated May 28, 2025: Members of the Village Council, public works and the police department will meet with Academy Heights neighbors at the Community Center next to Founders Park on June 18 at 7 p.m. to discuss traffic calming measures for Academy Street.

Neighbors in Academy Heights have appealed to the South Orange Village Council to come up with better solutions to make Academy Street safer.

The street, they say, is used as a cut through — especially with roadwork and traffic calming measures being put in on Valley Street — and the solar-powered speed radar signs aren’t helping.

The speed was captured as a car (not shown) on Academy approached a speed sign going 36 in a 25 mph zone. Neighbors say traffic calming measures aren’t working. (Photo by Laura Griffin)

“The last time we raised this issue, we were offered the solution of radar speed signs. However, they don’t offer the calming we were looking for,” neighbor Jessica Miller, who lives on a side street, told the Village Council at its May 13 meeting. “At least half the cars fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalks. Many cars travel at speeds that exceed the speed limit. I live on a side street, and yet I can hear the revving engines from my house. … My 8-year-old is old enough to walk to Clinton, but it’s the drivers on Academy that make me hesitant.”

Miller also told the Village Council that her middle schooler’s bike was hit as he was walking it across a crosswalk on Academy. She and other neighbors asked that the Village Council, the police department and engineers meet with the Academy Heights Neighborhood Association at the new community center at Founders Park to discuss possible solutions.

Some neighbors advocated for speed bumps or bump-outs aimed at calming traffic, and Academy Street resident Dan Dietrich, who lives “right in the thick of this traffic madness,” suggested striping the roadway so people can see how narrow the lanes are.

Dietrich said he has gone to public works meetings to bring up the issue, and was told that traffic calming measures have to go through the Police Department, but striping the road does not.

”It would be such a simple thing to put a center line stripe on Academy Street just to make people see the size of the lanes that they have to drive in. It would probably make them slow down some. It’s a simple thing. It doesn’t hurt any trucks bumping over, anything,” he said. “That’s my proposal — the next step to try, because the speed signs are doing nothing at all.”

Gerrie Hall, who also lives on Academy said,  “What I’ve observed as someone who is in my yard all the time and walks every day to the train, is that I still see, when I stop to look at their speeds, people going in excess of 30 miles an hour. That’s not everybody, but it is quite a few people. So again, I’m looking for more solutions so that we can make our neighborhoods safer.”

Hall said she was concerned that as more traffic calming measures are put on Valley Street, it will cause more drivers to use Academy as a cut through, especially if there are no stop signs or traffic lights on it. “As an observer, I can tell you that the street signs and the speeding signs really aren’t effective traffic calming.”

South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum said that both the Village and Essex County are making big investments in the town’s roads, and Village leaders advocated for 10 years for the improvements the County is making on Valley Street, which is part of the Academy Heights neighborhood, and will make Valley Street “significantly safer for pedestrians” with traffic calming bump outs and new lights.

“It is completely understandable that there will be questions about whether or not people will reroute to Academy and Prospect. I think that’s all very fair,” she said. “Right now, we do not have any traffic calming planned in our capital budget this year for those roads…. But I do believe there are probably things that can be done, and certainly anytime residents want to have a meeting with us, I think we absolutely want to have that meeting. And I think going to the new community room would be a lovely idea. I really liked what Mr. Dietrich had to say — that there are probably cheaper ways that we can go about seeing if we can reduce the speeding that is happening there.”