Work on the Carter Road bridge in Lawrence Township is still suspended as a result of Governor Chris Christie’s shut down order, and nobody is happy about it.

Local business owners are suffering financial losses. Motorists are facing increasing delays and hazards as detoured traffic clogs area roads. Roadways not intended for heavy traffic, let alone large truck traffic, are rapidly deteriorating. And necessary repairs and reconstruction of two historic bridges on 206 can’t start until the Carter Road bridge is reopened, because Carter Road is part of the designated detour route for the 206 bridge work. 

“At this point,” said Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert, “the Carter Road bridge project has been delayed so long that now the state has informed us that they won’t be repairing the 206 bridges until next spring.”

Business owners are distraught. “It’s a big issue,” said Pam Mount, co-owner with her husband of Terhune Orchards on Cold Soil Road. “It’s such a problem and so unnecessary. People come from a distance to get here, and the signs on the detours don’t always tell them how to get back on the road, and they end up in Pennington or Hopewell and can’t get here. It’s a problem of public safety and economics. People need to get to work. People need to get here. Farmers are really hurting. Also there are enormous trucks coming down Cold Soil Road and tearing up the road. These back roads aren’t built to accommodate this traffic.”

The bridge project was included in the governor’s July 8 order to stop $3.5 billion of “nonessential” road and rail projects in the state, in response to a stalemate in the state senate over which taxes should be cut in exchange for raising the gas tax to fund road work. Mr. Christie had earlier made a deal with the State Assembly to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund by raising New Jersey’s gas tax 23 cents a gallon, in exchange for lowering the state’s sales tax from seven to six percent by 2018.

“We appealed the NJDOT decision to abandon Carter Road,” Mercer County executive Brian Hughes said, but the answer from the DOT, delivered last week by Scott Stephens, director of Community and Constituent Relations, was “no.” The work stoppage will continue. “Executive order 2010 remains in effect, and no projects are set to be re-started at this time,” Mr. Stephens wrote in his response.

“I’m hoping that someone will come up with a reasonable resolution in the near future,” Mr. Hughes said. “The governor and the legislature seem to be playing chicken with each other and we don’t know what the outcome will be.”

“The County has been very helpful,” Ms. Mount said. “They’re trying to get this done before the fall. It’s absolutely stalled for a political reason. I’m incredibly disappointed. The DOT has money in the bank. They don’t have to have a new tax. This is an emergency.”

At Kale’s Nursery on Carter Road, sales at the garden center are down 35 percent since the April 18 bridge closure, according to owner and CEO Doug Kale. “The bridge project has been terrible for us and terrible for other businesses,” he said. “We had prepared for a healthy spring in retail sales, and suddenly the spigot turned off. They were supposed to close the bridge in June, then the signs suddenly went up for an April closure and the DOT didn’t inform businesses.”

Though Kale’s landscaping business has been less severely affected than the garden center, “that 35 percent is a big bite to take,” Mr. Kale stated.

Weighing in last week in a Town Topics letter to the editor, Cherry Grove Farm general manager and owner Oliver Hamill emphasized the loss of thousands of dollars so far. “Our store revenue is down,” he wrote, “and by the looks of it the fall season will only be worse. Shoppers just cannot get there due to the bridge closing and other stoppages in the Princeton area. My neighbors running small vital businesses producing locally grown foods so important to our shoppers have told me that sales are way off compared to 2015.”

Ms. Mount urged the DOT to grant the county the exemption necessary to resume construction, commenting “We’ve all called and lobbied and written letters. There’s a total groundswell of people trying to figure out how to get these projects on track.”

Mr. Hughes concluded, “When the state is leaving federal money on the table because people are afraid to act reasonably, it’s not government as it should be. That’s for sure.”