While the Alexander Road Bridge closure finally came to fruition at 8 p.m. on July 11, it was not until the first Monday morning commute on July 14 that the community began reeling from traffic jams around the train station. But as the days progress, some residents said they are noticing the traffic seems to be easing as commuters get used to their new routes.##M:[more]##
Traffic backed up on Princeton-Hightstown Road in either direction coming away from the train station, with jams stretching past the road’s intersection with South Mill Road and near the train station, even after 9 a.m. Congestion was also reported along Meadow and Bear Brook roads — a cut-through and alternative to the official Route 1 detour. And Route 1 traffic has been backing up more heavily than usual in both directions.
According to Mayor Shing- Fu Hsueh, the township mobilized its police and public works departments to “do whatever we could, and what we were allowed to do by the state.” This included adding extra police officers to the streets around the train station to help mitigate the traffic flow, and adding more signs around the community advising residents where to go.
The administration has sent a letter to the state Department of Transportation to ask for temporary traffic signals for the intersection of Clarksville and Meadow roads, and possibly for the Washington Road area near Station Drive. In addition, the township placed signs on Varsity Avenue advising commuters that the road is to be used for local traffic only.
There had been concern last year that the bridge closure would especially cause problems at the intersection of Clarksville and Meadow roads, and township officials said then that a permanent traffic signal would have been in place before the closure even occurred.
However, Hsueh says, it simply could not be done. “The traffic light had to be worked out with the county,” Hsueh says. “It was supposed to be done by the developers across the other side, the Axselrad property, but apparently because of the economic downturn, things didn’t move as fast as we would have liked to see. At the same time, there is also coordination that we need to have with the county. Clarksville Road is a county road.”
Currently, Hsueh says the intersection is a priority, and he hopes the letter to the DOT will encourage action soon at the intersection. “Whether they can do it or whether they will do it, we still have to follow up,” he says. “In the meantime, we have police standing at the intersection to direct traffic.”
“Eventually, we will have a permanent signal over there based on my conversation with the county years ago,” he said. Hsueh says township officials also asked the DOT for temporary traffic signals on Washington Road, but “it’s not always easy because the state budget is very tight.” He emphasized that West Windsor police are also on that road during rush hour to direct traffic.
Tim Greely, a DOT spokesman, said the DOT is currently reviewing the traffic safety device proposals it has received from the township.
“A final determination will be made directly to the mayor in a timely manner,” Greely said. He added that the geometry of the Clarksville and Meadow intersection is a unique situation, and that officials weren’t sure if it “would be conducive to having a traffic signal go in.”
Because the bridge closure was delayed two weeks, detours are expected to remain in effect into October — it was originally scheduled to be reopened on September 27 — with the entire project still scheduled for completion in November.
The $12 million project will replace the bridge with a single-span steel superstructure bridge, and will carry two 12-foot lanes, two 4-foot shoulders, and 6-foot sidewalks on both sides. The existing “T” intersection at North Post and Alexander roads will be replaced with a modern roundabout.
Council President Charles Morgan stated on his website that while he has agreed all along that the bridge needed to be replaced as soon as possible, he does not think the lengthy closure was needed.
“It is incontrovertable that half to two-thirds of the roundabout could have been completed along with access to North Post Road before closure of the old bridge,” Morgan stated. “That should have been done before the old bridge was closed.”
Further, he says, “my discussions with the DOT engineers, the project manager in charge of the construction, and the West Windsor Township engineer reached consensus that this could have been done. Why wasn’t it done? I don’t get good answers to that question. Given the critical importance of this connection for public safety (fire trucks, ambulances, police), especially during the rush hour, it should have been done. I have been asking for this for a long time and have been ignored. As a mere member of council with no executive power or authority, I have had to depend on the administration to work with me to make this happen. I am disappointed that it did not happen.”
“It would have been a little bit of an inconvenience for people building the bridge and it would have required a little bit of an extra effort,” Morgan said in a phone interview.
Hsueh called Morgan’s statements “misleading and counterproductive during this important phase of the project.” Hsueh, in a memo to the council and other township officials, also forwarded an E-mail from John Campi, the DOT project manager.
In the E-mail, Campi says that the newly constructed road will increase in elevation because additional bridge clearance is required over the railroad. “During the last phase of construction, a detour is unfortunately unavoidable, but necessary to tie the existing roads to the newly constructed roads,” Campi stated in the email.
Further, he said a conventionally constructed bridge was chosen for the project because the bridge “wasn’t on the critical path of the schedule.” Even if the DOT chose a “precast bridge,” the detour would “still be necessary,” Campi stated. “The techniques Mr. Morgan cites could have practical application on other projects, but the financial and site specific constraints on the Alexander Road Bridge project contributed to the design and construction methods,” he said.
“We were able to take care of a lot of the initial utility work back in late 2006 when we first did some initial closures of the bridge,” Greely said. “By doing that, we were actually able to shave three months off of what this closure would have been.”
Greely says that after the initial day of traffic jams, traffic seems to be flowing a bit more smoothly, as people familiarize themselves with other ways of getting around.
Richard Eland, who heads the West Windsor Neighborhoods Alliance, agrees. “The traffic was really only bad on Monday (July 14),” he said. “I haven’t noticed any bad or significant changes since then.”
He says he believes the first rush hour traffic jam “only goes to prove that this area between the train station and Carnegie Center is a regional area because the traffic was largely due to people outside of the immediate area,” like Cranbury, East Windsor, and Plainsboro. He mentioned that the township sent out letters and electronic notifications to residents ahead of time warning them about the coming closure and detours, but may not have sent out enough to those in neighboring towns who travel daily through West Windsor to get to work. The DOT also sent letters to business owners in the area highlighting detour routes and informing them of the closure as well.
Morgan said he was worried about the extra costs associated with assigning extra police officers to help with traffic circulation. Still, “you can only suggest so much, but I don’t have the staff, the tools, or the power to do anything about it,” he said. For now, he says council can support the mayor in putting the police out at each busy intersections.
