Bayonne residents attending the Oct. 15 City Council meeting received a preview of how their lives will be affected for the next four years as work takes place on the Interchange 14A Improvement Project.
Lisa Navarro, a senior project engineer for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, and Michael Morgan, vice president and business unit manager for the South Plainfield-based Gannett Fleming, Inc., a turnpike consultant on the project, briefed the audience on what changes will be necessary to complete the undertaking.
The plans stem from the preliminary designs drawn up following a study of the initiative in June 2009.
The council presentation followed public information sessions in December 2009, and January and July 2011. A public hearing was also held in July 2012.
The project calls for a wide array of actions, including detours, the removal and adding of traffic signals, property transfers, construction of a roundabout, and a building demolition.
When completed, the number of lanes in the toll plaza will increase, allowing for the greater ease of traffic into and out of the city via the turnpike.
“Essentially, we’re adding two lanes to the existing 11,” Morgan said.
If all goes well at the next turnpike commissioners meeting on Nov. 5, the goal is for shovels in the ground sometime in January for the project which will run into 2018.
Morgan, a design consultant, said that the project would include the demolition of a gas station building no longer in use at Avenue E and 52nd Street, and that the completed work would connect the turnpike to Route 440 via a two-lane connector bridge, with a shoulder. The current structure is only one lane in each direction.
A major component of the project is the addition of a new traffic configuration on Avenue E just below 53rd Street.
“We’re putting in a roundabout a little south of that,” Morgan said.
Navarro said that impacts to residents and others from the project would be minimized as much as possible, and would include temporary detours from 53rd Street to the turnpike and on the Connector Bridge and Frontage Road. She said there would be no peak commutation time closures.
“Progress and information will be posted to the project website,” she said.
One of the main inconveniences would be the detour on East 53rd Street, but Navarro said that would last only six months. The detour affecting the Connector Bridge is scheduled to last only one weekend. The detour on Frontage is slated to consist of 10 individual nighttime closures.
The plan Navarro presented mentioned the possibility of potential parkland being added through the project.
Navarro said a public meeting on the project would be held in November, and that the Turnpike Authority was working with the city on a date.
Councilman Gary La Pelusa requested that the authority furnish a schedule of when and where closures and detours would occur, when it becomes possible.
Navarro said the Turnpike Authority’s schedule would take into account closures of the Bayonne Bridge that are ongoing with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s “Raise the Roadway” project.
E-mail joepass@hudsonreporter.com.