While New Jersey's oldest bridge reopened after emergency repair works, thousands of other spans remain in dire need of maintenance. Watch video
New Jersey's oldest bridge, a scenic and graceful span on Route 206 over Princeton's Stony Brook, reopened last weekend after the state Department of Transportation performed hasty emergency repair surgery on a collapsed parapet and various other structural defects.
That's the good news. The bad news is that for now, the bridge is open only to vehicles under 20 tons; all others continue to use a detour.
The really, really bad news is that the Stony Brook bridge is only one of 2,310 bridges in New Jersey that the Federal Highway Administration has declared in need of attention - nearly one third of the bridges throughout this most populous of states.
The agency bestowed the dubious honor of ranking us among the 10 worst states in the nation in terms of deficient bridges in 2015 - bridges that were inadequate to handle their traffic loads or did not meet current safety requirements.
It's scant comfort that our neighbors Pennsylvania and New York fared worse in the FHA's annual report. And it's only marginally reassuring that New Jersey has worked to reduce its number of deficient bridges by 33 over the past year, when so many of our other bridges continue to fall short.
With a Transportation Trust Fund that's already running on empty, and a governor who has spent the better part of the last two years anywhere but in New Jersey, the situation is about as grim as it gets.
Grimmer, when you consider that Gov. Christie has not put forth anything constructive to address the issue in his latest proposed budget.
Repairs being made to N.J. bridges
The average bridge in the state is more than half a century old. Although state officials assure us none is in immediate danger of collapsing - as the Interstate 5 Bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle did in 2013 - it's terrifying to think that in this high-density traffic state, many bridges have outlived their expiration dates.
The same goes for many of our highways, heavily used by cars, trucks and buses on their way to and from Manhattan, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
It's time for our legislators to take a good, hard look at raising the gas tax to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund, which is supposed to finance the cost of planning, acquisition, engineering, construction, reconstruction, repair and rehabilitation of the state's transportation infrastructure.
The Stony Brook Bridge was built in 1792, just a decade and a half after the Unite States declared its independence. It had not seen major repairs since 1916. Let's not wait another century to have a conversation that's long overdue.