By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
In Princeton, it’s detour, after detour, after detour.
“The other day I was dropping the kids off at school I was stuck for 30 minutes, just no movement at all,” said Princeton resident Monika Suri.
Repairs to the 200-year-old bridge over the Stony Brook have closed a section of Route 206 indefinitely.
“We’re asking for everybody’s patience. Like I said the DOT has been terrific, but it’s a difficult project,” said Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert.
The Department of Transportation closed the bridge for emergency repairs after a piece of parapet collapsed last week. A spokesperson for the department telling NJTV News, the recent powerful storm and heavy rains caused record water levels at the site leading to the damage. An underwater inspection revealed soil erosion was compromising the bridge’s foundation, too.
“It receives about over 13,000 vehicle trips a day. It’s one of the major access points in and out of Princeton and one of the reasons why it hasn’t been getting the attention it needs is because the state has failed to fund the transportation trust fund and this is just one example of many around the state,” Lempert said.
According to DOT, it was built by hand in 1792 and is considered the oldest bridge in continuous use on a state highway in New Jersey. The Department of Transportation says it’s inspected every two years, the most recent in August of 2015. Priority repairs had been scheduled for the bridge, but it’s unclear what those repairs entailed.
“This is part of the problem, is that we have pushed off needed maintenance for so long because we didn’t have money and now what you see in this case is it’s literally crumbling. It’s caused a huge safety issue and it’s now caused a huge inconvenience,” said Cathleen Lewis of AAA.
Lewis adds this pushes cars off to other roads causing congestion and accelerating structural issues elsewhere. And according to the mayor, there was insult added to injury in recent years.
“There’s a lot of trucks that were coming over that bridge when they shouldn’t have been. It’s a narrow bridge, it’s an older so they would often scrape the side of the bridge as they went over it,” Lempert said.
This bridge falls under historical protections, so repairs have to preserve that integrity. As of right now the Department of Transportation can’t give a firm schedule as to when it will reopen, but says it’s slated for closure through the end of this week and possibly the next.