MTR 285, Study Reveals Bypass Will Worsen NJ Rt. 206 Bottleneck

Issue 285

September 11, 2000

Study Reveals Bypass Will Worsen NJ Rt. 206 Bottleneck

The Star-Ledger reported last week that Montgomery residents who live in a housing development adjacent to the route planned for the Route 206 Bypass are agitating to force the NJ Dept. of Transportation to change its alignment. But data presented at a September 8th meeting of the Central Jersey Transportation Forum shows the residents are over-looking the construction's most dramatic effects. According to models generated by the engineering consultant URS Greiner, no matter the exact alignment, the Bypass will severely increase vehicle grid-lock on Route 206 by 2020.

NJDOT plans to widen the two-lane Route 206 to four lanes from the Somerville Circle to Hillsborough Township, in addition to building a new five mile elevated four-lane bypass through Hillsborough and Montgomery Townships to allow traffic to circumvent a two-lane portion. The cost of the combined projects totals over $140 million in federal and state transportation funds (MTR #231).

By building the four-lane bypass, the DOT will increase through-traffic capacity on that portion of Route 206 corridor by 200%. A "do nothing" scenario under which the Bypass is not built projects that traffic along Rt. 206 in southern Somerset County will remain either well under or simply "approaching" capacity in 2020. In two different future "build" scenarios that include the Bypass construction, in twenty years the corridor directly south of the new road will be filled to over-capacity with new traffic expected to result in extreme congestion for at least two hours a day.