There are 10 bridges in the Princeton area that are“structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete,” New Jersey Department of Transportation commissioner Jamie Fox said last month.
There are 500 bridges around the state of New Jersey that fall under this category.
The 10 bridges in the Princeton area include bridges that serve important commuter routes, including Princeton Pike and Alexander Street, according to a Feb. 5 Walkable Princeton article about the bridges.Upgrades and replacements are estimated to cost $400 million statewide, and the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund is on the verge of depletion.
However, the bridges near Princeton are on the priority list for updates, upgrades and replacements, according to the article.
Politics Professor Emeritus Jim Doig said thatGovernor of New Jersey Chris Christie’s unwillingness to raise the gas tax, which funds road repair projects, has been an important reason why New Jersey has been unable to carry out needed work in the past three or four years.
“An important part of the solution is to raise the gas tax,” he said. “New Jersey bridges and roadways need maintenance and repair.”
On Jan. 12, Fox announced that the Prospect Street Bridge in Dover, a town in Morris County, had been closed because engineers deemed it was “too feeble to carry the weight of traffic.”
A second bridge, spanning Amwell Road in Franklin Township which is 12 miles north of Princeton, was closed on Jan. 16after it was found to be in deteriorating condition, according to the Times of Trenton.
The failure to raise the gas tax was also an important factor in the cancellation of the Access to the Region's Core project, which would have increased the number of New Jersey commuters able to travel to New York at a given time, Doig said in February 2014. Doig said at the time that Christie canceled the project in order to avoid having to raise the gas tax, which he called a politically sensitive issue for Christie.
A Rutgers-Eagleton Dec. 16 poll said that nearly 60 percent of New Jersey residents do not support an increase in the gas tax.
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