While residents have been saying the new Alexander Road bridge has certainly made a difference when it comes to easing their commutes, the entire project is still not finished.
Some residents have asked during township meetings whether lighting will be placed in the roundabout for night-time travel, saying the roundabout is hard to navigate when dark outside. Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh and other township officials have been saying that once the steel from the previous bridge is completely removed, then PSE&G can come in and relocated the utility poles so that lighting in the area will be possible.
But when that steel — which requires the use of a crane — is removed is up to the state Department of Transportation, which must coordinate efforts with Amtrak, which runs trains under the bridge and will be affected by the work.
While construction on the roadway itself was completed on December 4, the DOT had estimated final completion to be around February 5. The timeline is dependent on the weather.
The new bridge over the New Jersey Transit Northeast Corridor and Amtrak train tracks — replacing the original and outdated bridge built in 1941 — is a single-span steel superstructure bridge that carries two 12-foot lanes, two 4-foot shoulders, and 6-foot sidewalks on both sides.
The project includes a new bike trail near the residential homes — formerly lining North Post and Alexander roads — that now have a barrier between their properties and traffic. This is because construction of the bridge and new roundabout features elevated grade, and pieces of what was formerly those sections of Alexander and North Post roads are no longer along that path. As a result of the construction, the travel lanes leading up to the roundabout were moved over, leaving some of the former pavement of both roads along what is now the wall of the roundabout, creating a visual and sound barrier for the residences. Residents were involved in picking out the materials and design for the wall, since their properties would be facing it once the project is finished.
The steel support structures of the former bridge are still in place over the tracks next to the new structure. Removing the steel requires the bridge to be closed overnight, at which time workers will take the old bridge structure away via crane. And whether the removal of the former structure will take one or more nights of work depends on the outage that Amtrak gives construction crews, officials have said. This is because Amtrak has to switch all of its electric engines to diesel, and a diesel crew has to run in order to turn the power off on the track.
Alerts were sent out early last week warning that this work would be taking place over the weekend of January 16 to 18, but subsequent alerts canceled the closure because of “the preparations for the increase in Amtrak’s services from Boston to Washington for Barack Obama’s inauguration.” In order for the work to take place, three legs of the transmission wires would have had to be de-energized that weekend.
Officials from the state DOT and Amtrak are working to determine when the next available opportunity will be for the removal of the remaining floor beam and through-girders of the bridge. When the Amtrak outages do occur, the work will take almost three days, as crews will most likely have to close the road, erect the crane, remove the old structure, and keep the road closed until the crane is disassembled and loaded back onto trucks in sections.
During the closure, traffic will be detoured to Washington Road, as it was over the summer when the bridge was being constructed. Hsueh said the decision on the timing during which the bridge will close will come from Amtrak.
The bridge was originally scheduled to re-open at the end of September, but its opening was delayed by two months, to December, because construction crews found an undocumented gas main when they were building the foundation for the roundabout.
According to numbers provided by the DOT, the original construction cost was estimated at $12.1 million. However, costs associated with utilities totaled about $5.5 million, and costs associated with the right-of-way totaled $678,”000, driving the total cost to about $21 million.
All of the costs associated with the project have been paid by the state; West Windsor taxpayer money was not used for the project.
