And, suddenly, the sleepy county road became a highway.
Many Cranbury residents along Old Trenton Road were angered upon their realization that Middlesex County is about to expand the road from two lanes to six. Once completed, the road will become the Central Jersey Turnpike, a toll highway.
“At 8 o’clock Monday morning they just started digging up half of my front lawn,” said John Maynard, an Old Trenton Road resident. “It was bad enough that we had cars whizzing by our house at all hours, but the thought of this road becoming a six-lane highway is mind-blowing.”
The apparent lack of notice about the project seemed to irk residents as much the project itself.
“We seem to get email notices from the township every time someone as much as farts at a committee meeting,” said Bill Williams, a Shadow Oaks resident. “It just seems fishy to me that there would be no communication to residents from the township regarding a change this monumental.”
A spokesman for the county said the project has been in the planning stages for more than six years, and that Cranbury Township officials have received regular status reports.
“The mayor and the township administrator have been getting weekly briefings from us over the entire planning process,” said Roy Jasper, the county’s lead engineer on the expansion project. “If anything, we’ve probably been giving them too much information.”
Christine Smeltzer, Cranbury’s township administrator, said the township is not obligated to advise residents of county projects.
“Usually it is the county’s responsibility to notify residents directly of any projects that might affect them,” she said. “We’re busy enough here in Town Hall trying to schedule all these games on the new ball field.”
Once completed in June 2011, the Central Jersey Turnpike promises to whisk commuters from Route 130 to the heart of Trenton in under 15 minutes. The speed limit on the expanded road will be 65 miles per hour.
Jasper also confirmed that six houses in Shadow Oaks had been seized by the county via eminent domain to make room for numerous turn lanes and an overpass.
“We tried to be as minimally invasive to existing residences as possible,” he said. “But the reality is Cranbury is a key transportation artery through which we need to move more than a million vehicles each day.”
Photo: By June 2011, Old Trenton Road will become the Central Jersey Turnpike, a six-lane toll road.
