Road projects spring up all over W. Monmouth Mark R osman In the News The coming months, if not years, will test the patience of drivers in western Monmouth County in a way in which they have never been tested before. A “perfect storm” of transportation projects is under way and all of this work is expected to resolve problems at key locations throughout the area. There isn’t a transportation agency or a government body anywhere that could have planned to start all of these major projects at the same time, so call it a once-in-a-century fluke that years of design and planning have unbelievably resulted in at least five major projects now taking place simultaneously. By our count here in the newsroom, they are: • The replacement of the Route 9 bridge over Route 522 in Freehold Township. The project includes the construction of new entrance-exit ramps to and from Route 9. The 60-year-old bridge over Route 522 was crumbling after a long life; it will be replaced by a new span. • Major improvements to the intersection of Route 522 and Tennent Road in Manalapan that are expected to move traffic through this bottleneck in a more efficient manner. • The reconfiguration of the intersection of Route 9, Route 79 and Schanck Road in Freehold Township. • The reconfiguration of the intersection of Route 9 and Route 524 in Freehold Township. • Construction of an overpass over business Route 33 at Halls Mill and Kozloski roads. This is part of a larger project that is essentially building a bypass of Route 9 from Route 524 and Halls Mill Road in Freehold Township to Pond Road at the Freehold Township-Manalapan border. There are at least three other projects I can think of that are also on the board — the reconstruction of Halls Mill Road between Three Brooks Road and Route 524 in Freehold Township; planned improvements to Three Brooks Road between Halls Mill Road and Route 9 in Freehold Township; and improvements to the intersection of Route 9 and Route 520 in Marlboro. In fairness to the agencies and construction firms making these improvements, however, I must say it appears to me that traffic is flowing in a mostly normal fashion at the project sites as crews work on the perimeter of each impacted area. Some of the locations have and will result in detours that are likely to cost motorists time and stress. It is hoped that the results of each project will be worth the inconvenience. I recently received a draft copy of the Monmouth County Cross Acceptance report for 2004. This interesting document produced by the Monmouth County Planning Board includes information about every municipality in the county. Local officials describe their planning visions for the next five to 10 years, and list the key issues facing their community. Without fail, the first or second key issue noted by officials from every town the News Transcript covers is traffic. That is no surprise since the continuing boom in western Monmouth’s residential and commercial development in almost every nook and cranny of our communities has caused traffic problems that have put people at their wits end. I am not telling anyone who is reading this column something they do not already know when I say that traffic conditions on local roads, county roads and state highways in our region is a disaster at many times of the day and night. A 10-mile trip from Freehold Township to Marlboro on Route 9 on a weekend afternoon can now take almost 30 minutes. Quality of life can be measured in the number of lights it takes to get through the backup at Craig Road, if you can see either the light or Craig Road from the end of the line of traffic in which you sit. For the past decade, residents and municipal officials lobbied long and hard for road improvements in the hope that the situation on Route 9 and other roads could be improved. Many of those projects are coming to fruition right now. However, the underlying issue that I read about in a recent study of the Route 9 corridor in western Monmouth will not change — namely, that as more development occurs in this region additional cars will be on the roads. The study makes it clear that development will continue and states that in 10 to 13 years, Route 9 could well be a permanent parking lot between Howell and Marlboro. With or without the road improve-ments now under way and on the drawing board, that is not a picture of the future that western Monmouth County residents can be happy about. Mark Rosman is the managing editor of the News Transcript.