Pastoria Street there are not the same as the sidewalks that are at Mr. Villaby's property.
Do you agree with that also? That's correct. So what your testimony is, would be dependent on
where along that block a pedestrian happens to be when a car is coming towards them.
No, it's not. My testimony is that the interaction of cars and pedestrians along West Pastoria
Street, along its entire lane, is safe. And that's primarily because of two things. The low volume of
pedestrians and vehicles and the fact that it can safely be seen in terms of sight lines to allow
for those interactions to be, you know, for a pedestrian or a vehicle to react to what they
are seeing. So it's not dependent on the presence or not of sidewalks, although it is noted that
there are sidewalks in front of the subject site. So are you assuming, Mr. Horner, that
any driver along Pastoria Street would be driving in a safe and cautious manner at all times?
Well, when we analyze and design access driveways and make proclamations as to whether they are
safe or not. It presumes that there will be safe passage, or I guess I'll say rule following by
both pedestrians and vehicles. Again, if it is deemed that pedestrians don't have safe passage
along Pistorius, which would be, if that's the case, it would be the case under existing conditions,
then uh then that's when a pedestrian walkway would then have to be continued on through the
entire street or some other means of pedestrians to to traverse but uh i don't believe it's unsafe
i believe the level of interaction is safe uh so uh but you're but you said you're assuming
that the vehicles driving on pastoria street are obeying all traffic rules and are are are being
driven in a safe and cautious manner? That's correct, right? Yes. When we make a review and
a design of an access, that's what we have to presume. Yes. Okay. Is that your experience in
the real world that everyone who drives down streets is always operating in a safe and
cautious manner? No, of course it's not. However, you don't design. There's always a possibility of
a driver or a pedestrian or anybody, let's say they're impaired, for example. You don't design
an intersection based on the possibility that a driver or a pedestrian will be impaired.
If you did that, there would never be any interaction or conflict. There would be no
intersections because you'd have to presume that people will be running red lights, for example.
So that's not the presumption. The presumption is, yes, you design it appropriately so that
the rules can be followed and you expect that they will be. And if they don't, they are dealt
with at a later time in terms of enforcing rules or changing something so that situation doesn't
arise. Well, they may be dealt with at a later time, Mr. Horner, but at the moment that someone
is driving unsafely or not cautiously and there is a collision with a pedestrian, at that moment,
no one can deal with that except for the the except for the injury that that occurs right
yes but again you you you have to design what's appropriate you don't design for the possibility
that someone will break every rule that there can be i mean you can't there can be no roadway
design if you design for every vehicle going 100 miles an hour drunk i mean i i don't i don't
understand the uh well that's okay so is your testimony that you were that your report is
basically drawing drawing conclusions based on the ideal conditions of a design as opposed to what
is the the risk to pedestrians in the real world uh no it's not my report is based on the fact that
the volumes of pedestrians and the volumes of vehicles are such, and the design of the
of vehicles are such, and the design of the road, the width of the road, the sight distance of the
road, the width of the road.
road, they're all appropriate for me to recommend that the access as designed on this plan is
appropriate. That's what it's based on. You also testified, though, that you thought
that it was more appropriate to put traffic onto Pastorius than onto West Obahokan, right?
it that's correct yes so you were making some kind of a judgment and assessment that in your
view west pastorius was a safer road for traffic and pedestrians than west topohockin uh the access
to and from this site this property is safer coming out onto pastorius in and out than it
is on the Topohockin. And that's primarily because you have limitations of site distance
coming out on the Topohockin due to the on-street parking.
Right. It's the site distance from West Topohockin. And we already went through that in the cross
examination that that can be adjusted. That curb cut can be expanded. You had no basis to say that
it couldn't be in our in your in your past testimony yeah i didn't say it couldn't be
right so but you want you want this board to believe that well let me just ask the last
question how many cars did would it take to to um potentially injure a pedestrian assuming that
there's low relatively low traffic in pest on pastorius compared to west topahawken isn't it
true that only one car would be it would take only one car that was that was driving unsafely
to injure a pedestrian potentially? I'm not sure I understand the question.
You testified that part of the safety aspects that you view West Pistorius is that there's
just not a lot of traffic going up and down that street. Correct. Can't just one car going up and
down that street, injure a pedestrian? Of course it can.
Just like on any street. I have no further questions.
Mr. Masters, do you want to call your first witness?
Sure. I would
like to call Carla Willard. Are you okay, Mr.?
Yeah, I would just ask if Mr. Horner can be dismissed. Okay.
carla has been allowed to speak okay could you hi good morning could you state your name please
and spell for the court stenographer yes my name is carla willard uh c-a-r-l-a-w-i-l-l-a-r-d
right sorry all right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing
but the truth i do mr masters proceed all right is it possible to um to elevate um professor willer
to um to panel so that the so that the board can see her the the four witnesses i have who are the
objectors i think it would be helpful to be able to see them when they're testifying that's that's
fine with me they have been promoted to panelists okay thank you there we go hi okay everyone
all right now I'm gonna try to um we just uh I understand you have some photos that you want to
refer to as part of your yes yes I do and and before I I speak about them um and I'm not going
to speak for more than you know eight to nine minutes i just want to say a couple of things
uh about the so-called sidewalk that mr uh that topahawken mansion has created in front of the
can we just um just pause for a second um can you first can you first tell the board where it is you
live how close it is to darren bilby's property and how close it is to the 15 parking spaces that
are uh proposed in this application so i live at the other end of pastorius toward uh wayne avenue
um i am over 300 feet uh from the subject property um my house is one and a half feet
from the curb the sidewalks are in good shape but there's nobody that can walk on them because
they're too narrow and i did if it's okay want to say something about the sidewalks in front of
Topohokin Mansion's subject property, they are what we call aprons, I believe.
They are slanted. They are not flat. And when it's icy, you can't walk on them.
They are not flat. And when it's icy, you can't walk on them. When it's rainy, you can't walk on
them. They lead up to curbs that, as you know, should not be there, but that are there. And so
they are not, I don't believe, sidewalks, although you're using the term sidewalk.
But if I can continue, I want to talk about residents that walk on Pastorius on a daily
basis. As you know, from the many letters that you received, there are seniors, school children
and families, bikers, and persons with reduced mobility that walk on the cartway because they
must. And the main point I'm going to make here is that this is a very different kind of street
because the public street of Pastorius is also a public sidewalk. Those neighbors with reduced
mobility. Several of them, many of them actually, live in the addresses adjacent to Pastorius on
Walnut Lane, but many of them seniors have their main pedestrian gate on Pastorius, and those
numbers are not captured by our traffic study. There are, on any given day, about 50 people
that walk on that block, and the ratio of cars to people is about two to one.
um i want to show you a map here um because i want to talk actually instead of talking about
our immediate uh close neighbors i want to talk about the uh the larger community we have two
schools one here uh and i'm circling here and a lingawack elementary the other it's about two
blocks away we have a waldorf school here around the corner here's the pastoreas cartway
and we all have four freedoms and i will talk about that in a minute um you have in your binder
in our binder that was submitted to you a letter from lingobock principal lisa waddell
who was very concerned about her kids and her and her families who walk on the block
if we could go to picture number two i believe um here we have well that's not it maybe i should
share my screen. Can I share my screen? Is that possible? Can we arrange that?
Is it possible for me to share my screen? I'm asking the question now. Can we arrange her to
share her screen? Yeah, she would just need to hit that green share screen button at the bottom.
At the bottom. Okay, thank you. Here we go. Okay. So here's the map.
um it's you're you're not up yet it's coming now we're fine okay yeah so here's the map and it's
a little bit better i think lingelbach is here two blocks away waldorf is around the corner and
four freedoms house is down the street and in back of the train station right here and i'll talk
about four freedoms in just a minute um the uh letter you have from uh principal lisa waddell
from lingelbach elementary um is uh very specific about you know her her walks on uh pastoria street
um there is there are approximately 350 children who attend 330 to 350 that attend uh lingelbach
elementary and the kids that you see here are part of the after school program um i took this picture
because something remarkable happened just before i took it i was putting out recycling last may
around 5 p.m and a car was coming slowly from green street towards these kids and the kid that
you see here was joking with his friends and he jumped out in the middle of the cartway just
before that car basically hit him luckily the driver was being attentive there was no driver
There was no driver problem. But but but, you know, the point I'm trying to make here is that the actions of children, a lot of them walking on the street, you know, are unpredictable and erratic as a lot of children are.
The actions of a lot of children are. I also want to talk about, let's see here, the letter from manager of operations, Betsy Sweeney.
Objection. Continued objection to testimony regarding other people's letters as hearsay.
Well, let me just, these are part of, these are exhibits that are in our, in our folder and, and Professor Willard has had conversations with, with these folks and she actually solicited those letters that were submitted to the board.
So we're going to let her continue, let her continue, please.
Go proceed.
Oh, she's, she's been muted though. You need to unmute.
Okay. I just want to reference the letters that you've already read.
um i'm asking the board to please consider what it's like for us who live on the block and who use
I'm asking the board to please consider what it's like for us who live on the block and who use this block from the larger neighborhood who walk on the on a sidewalk that is also a street.
I walked last April at the end of April with a father and child down towards Wayne, which is the direction that these people are going.
This is a Lingleback. I'm sorry. This is a Waldorf family, by the way, the child on the bike and the mom.
but I walked with a father and two children and without knowing it a Prius was coming up behind
us we didn't hear anything until the car was about a few feet away and it blew its horn and the kid
the son who's about eight years old and was a little farther down from this child on the bike
tried to hop up on the curb and fell against a stone wall again about a foot and a half from
the cartway um and the the father who had the other child on his chest sat on the curb to check
out his son the son was unhurt and the Prius passed us by about two feet uh from where I was
standing um but but you know the the point being here that you know cars have to be driving safely
and they don't always do that uh around the same time a little bit later towards the beginning of
May. I was walking early evening with my dog in the other direction, and a car swerved into my
pathway. I jumped up on the curb and fell against the sycamore that you just saw in Mr. Phillips's
presentation. You know, I don't know why that car swerved into my pathway, but it did.
Cars do. People text in cars and so forth. But anyway, Miss Sweeney, and I would refer to her letter again, you know, her letter is in the binder, is concerned about so many cars being parked on Pastorius when there is, you know, there is a lot of room within the property to park more safely and even more conveniently for the handicapped tenants.
um the other side of the street which mr corner thinks is less safe because of the exit
is 45 feet wide and on each side of topahawken there are sidewalks contiguously down the street
most of them are five feet wide okay so there's plenty of safe space for pedestrians to walk
um lastly i want to talk here is a again uh what you have to do with a carriage you know most
carriages cannot hop that curve. I want to talk about a few of our residents with reduced mobility.
Again, Mr. Jones has written to you a letter. He is from the Four Freedoms House. Four Freedoms is
an apartment complex with 287 units for seniors over 62 who have what they call restricted income.
uh mr jones walks on the street as he's written in his letter because he needs a smooth surface
to walk on he is on oxygen and several of those neighbors at four freedoms walk on the street
one of them a dog walker who told me that they don't have a lot of family to pick them up
and they use the neighborhood to you know to get out and to walk around
so to sum up um i want to just say that our shared street works uh it works well
when it's shared respectfully, when parked cars have at least several feet before they reach the
apron and when they can turn around within the property, you know, when they don't have to back
up or pull out onto sidewalks without, you know, a good amount of space before they do.
Tobahoggan Mansion has created parking spaces that are very shallow or short. They line up
against a slanted apron where there is no sidewalk in my opinion before the cartway they
comprise a linear style parking lot that is more than a half a football field long and and they
are asking you to approve 15 more spaces along that lot together with 22 that they already have
within this very very large property uh and as you know topahawken mansion wants to block the
internal drive and force 37 tenant cars out on Pastorius alone. So I've heard people call this
case annoying, but I don't know any neighbor living in any residential neighborhood that
would not be annoyed by the prospect of a parking lot lining up over 150 feet right off the sidewalk
of one block, a block where people walk in the cartway. We hope the board considers the safety
of the people of the block as well as in the larger germantown neighborhood and we entreat
you to encourage this owner to create alternative safer parking within his large property thank you
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
for the opportunity to testify mr masters are you
Mr. Masters, are you through?
Yes, that is Professor Willard's testimony.
Hi, Mr. Phillips.
Professor Willard, can you just, I don't believe we got it, but can you just state what your address is for the board?
265 West.
Pastores.
is okay and i'm just going to uh can i ask you just to stop your uh screen share so i can sure
i'm sorry absolutely
that's my car so this is this is
your uh mr phillips you're breaking up a lot could you try to get closer to the
computer we have a hard time hearing you i'm gonna try to reconnect right now that's better that's
better i apologize my internet for some reason keeps going in and out this morning is this
better yes it's fine yep okay um all right and don't mind let me just
all right so this is your that's my car
and this is your entrance facing pastorius right that is correct okay and uh is it true
let me zoom here so looking at the top of my screen um we have topahokan walnut lane green
street and wayne ave and then this is pastoria's that that runs through here and is it fair this
this what's highlighted in blue here is your parcel uh yes two parking spaces with an easement
on two as well okay and and this property right here is is uh mr ramos's michael ramos that is
correct yes okay and did you used to own um the entire property and then subjection this has
nothing to do with cross-examination i didn't her direct examination does not i i think i
mr masters i think she already answered that she did okay no the answer is no but you have parking
spaces here that uh enter an exit onto pastorius correct correct okay and if as i'm traveling up
pastorius um are these the the same parking spaces correct so i'm parked in the easement
right there there are two parking spaces the first ones that i own that were created in the
1980s and then the last one over there is an easement and i was parking there for i think
there was a delivery or something like that so there are eight parking spots here there are
seven i believe there there are three maybe four on that side they're basically three on that side
two on the other side and then there's two easement parking spaces i'm going to continue