Ocean City, New Jersey is a charming beach front, inter-coastal town just south of Atlantic City. For about five hours each day on a dozen summer Saturdays, vehicles traveling from the Garden State Parkway via Rt. 52 to the beach town can experience an hour of delay. At the same time, there is often bumper to bumper traffic from Exit 12 to Exit 7 of the Atlantic City Expressway where one veers off onto the New Jersey Parkway South on the way to Ocean City.
The Watchdog, familiar with the local road system, invests perhaps fifteen minutes of normal travel time to approach Ocean City by exiting at Exit 12 of the Expressway, taking Rt. 322 to Tilton Road and then across the Margate Bridge, and entering Ocean City via the Longport bridge..without delay.
For the past few years motorist along the two mile stretch from Somers Point to Ocean City have observed the construction of a bridge system, much level above the water but in locations near either end rising up towards the sky in configurations and with ramps normally only found in major metropolitan areas, if even there. A purpose is to eliminate the need for draw bridges.
According to the below dispatch from the New Jersey Transportation Department, work will be concluded in 2012 and the cost will be $400 million. We intuit there will be significant cost overruns.
We question that the $400 million or half a billion dollars was wisely spent simply to allay a somewhat self inflicted traveltime scheduling inconvenience or might better have been better allocated for the repair of bridges and roads and construction of more modest, less sensational projects of greater need elsewhere.
Moreover, what happens when all of these cars hit the Ocean City streets? Will we have the same backups, but a couple of miles closer to the beach?
Below is an excerpt with a link to an article and artist renderings of the completed project.
“The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) began in Summer 2006 the first part of its $400 million project to replace the Route 52 Causeway bridges and the roadway section between Somers Point and Ocean City, including the elimination of the Somers Point Circle. The work is expected to last until 2012. This is one of NJDOT’s largest projects and is critical because it is the emergency evacuation route for Ocean City.
“Two fixed and two moveable bridges will be replaced by two bridges that will have two high fixed spans over Ship Channel and Beach Thorofare (Intracoastal Waterway) and a touchdown on Rainbow Island. The new roadway section will have two 12-foot lanes and 8-foot minimum outside shoulders in each direction separated by a concrete median barrier…” (more)
Another great example of exactly why the government should not be in a postion to take and spend anymore of our money. They waste it on ridiculous projects like this, on outrageous salary and benefit packages for government employees (particulalry police and firefighters), and on other boondoggles that couldn’t pass muster even in the “never seen a government project I didn’t like” world of John Maynard Keynes.
Before you question benefit packages for police and firefighters, remember that they cannot collect Social Security from their government earnings. When they retire, they never get a cost of living.