Huge N.J. Turnpike widening project nearly complete

For years, traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike has bottlenecked between Exits 6 and 9, northeast of Trenton, where 12 lanes dwindled to six.

Now a massive, $2.3 billion project to widen the roadway has been nearly completed. It is set to open to traffic this weekend, beginning with the northbound lanes.

"The work is basically done," Thomas Feeney, a Turnpike Authority spokesman, said Tuesday.

Crews this week are completing paving, striping, and line painting, Feeney said. The work should be finished by late Friday or early Saturday, he said.

The northbound lanes are expected to open sometime Saturday, weather permitting, Feeney said. The southbound lanes will open next weekend.

The big question is whether the new lanes will ease congestion. Backups stretching for miles are common, especially during peak travel times.

The new configuration will transform the turnpike into a 12-lane highway from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Connector at Exit 6 in Burlington County to Exit 9 in New Brunswick, where it is already that wide.

"By doubling capacity, we expect a lot of that to go away," Feeney said. "Once both sides are open, the capacity through Central Jersey will double."

Construction began in June 2009 on the equivalent of 170 miles of new lanes to widen the turnpike. The goal was to ease the pinch near Interchange 8A, where car and truck lanes merge.

Some transportation experts are not convinced that adding lanes will reduce congestion. They cite a highway engineering phenomenon known as "induced demand" - the tendency for new lanes to attract new drivers. Human nature and traffic science make it inevitable, the experts have said.

Billed as the biggest current roadway project in the United States, the construction is being completed about a month ahead of schedule and $200 million under initial cost projections, Feeney said.

New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel said, however, that the project was "wasting taxpayer money and time." He said it took too long to complete and cost too much.

Tittel preferred an earlier proposal that called for widening the turnpike by two lanes in each direction. He said that would have allowed for reversible lanes and given the same traffic capacity as six lanes.

"That was a better alternative, because when you look at the turnpike, there can be bumper-to-bumper traffic one way and empty the other way," Tittel said in a statement. "By doing this alternative, the state could have saved 25 percent and the project would have been finished two years sooner."

A ceremonial ribbon-cutting is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the Molly Pitcher service area on the southbound side between Exits 8A and 8.

The project is the largest in the 63-year history of the turnpike. Tolls were increased to pay for it.