By Erin Delmore
Correspondent
If you lined up every lane of road in New Jersey end to end you would have 38,000 miles of pavement. That’s enough roadway to cross the country thirteen times. It’s all jam-packed into our tiny state, but who decides which roads get repair work done?
We’d be crazy if we didn’t start with a web search and call over to the Department of Transportation. I set a date to meet Richard Hammer, the head of the pavement management division and the newly-named acting Commissioner at Department of Transportation Headquarters in Trenton.
“We inspect our roads on a regular basis. All of our highways and interstates are inspected. And basically the type of material that’s gathered relates to like the roughness of the road, how smooth it is to the driver, that’s what people care about,” he said. “But the most important engineering aspects of the road is the levels of distress, cracking. Are there a lot of patches on there, are there underlying issues on the pavement?”
It’s all entered into the DOT’s “pavement management system database” and then sorted into planned work and emergency repairs.
“Obviously if we have an emergent need, we’re going to tend to that as quickly as possible. We have operations crews that are on standby throughout the state whenever we have situations where we have extensive potholing, or just things that come up. Little stretches of road that need to be repaired, we’ll get a contractor out there and repair that as quickly as possible,” Hammer said.
Behind me is one of the Department of Transportation’s crews. They’re here in Hamilton today resurfacing a stretch of Route 33 West, under the 295 overpass.
The crew mills stretches of pavement and then shovels the asphalt into piles. A loader shuttles it to a dump truck that’s parked a few yards away. Crews like this one comb the state carrying out assigned work and scouting areas in need of repair.
To answer our question of who decides what road work gets done, in short, municipalities are in charge of most of the state’s roads. But about 6,000 lane-miles are maintained by the counties. The Atlantic City Expressway has its own authority. The same goes for the Parkway and the Turnpike.
“If it’s a state highway, or an interstate highway, that falls under the Department of Transportation,” Hammer said.
You can get the DOT’s ear by calling 1-800-POT-HOLE. And if you see an issue that’s not on a highway, contact your local public works department.
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