HOPEWELL/EWING: Open house to show why Scudder Falls I-95 bridge must be replaced

The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission will hold an open house and reforestation hearing for the Scudder Falls bridge replacement project from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, at the West Trenton Volunteer Fire Company Ballroom, 40 W. Upper Ferry Road, West Trenton. It will be immediately followed by a public reforestation hearing from 6 to 7:30 at the same location.
The event will explain project-related tree cutting work scheduled to start after Oct. 1 in the vicinity of the bridge, its I-95 New Jersey approach and the nearby Route 29 interchange.
There will be viewing stations where the public may examine project concepts, renderings and information boards. People positioned at each station will provide explanations and answer questions.
A video will run continuously. The video explains why the current bridge needs to be replaced, a general outline of the project’s major construction elements and an explanation of how the work will be staged to keep traffic moving across the river while construction takes place.
The open house is expected to include up to 20 display boards of project information and renderings. These will include timeline for design and construction. design and construction sequencing and the proposed layout of a redesigned Route 29/I-95 interchange. It will show the anticipated designs and location of noise abatement walls to be installed.
The public hearing will feature a presentation followed by public comments on the tree clearing work and the reforestation plan to compensate for the loss of those trees.
Written comments will be accepted at the forum for 60 days after the hearing.
In early December, the commission hosted an open house in Yardley, Pa., to discuss tree-clearing activities along the Pennsylvania I-95 approach to the Scudder Falls bridge. Tree cutting is needed to clear a path for noise-abatement walls that will be installed along portions of the roadway later this year.
The project entered final design in March 2015. Other activities conducted last year include aerial mapping, land surveying, utility line identification and the collection of ground core samples along the project’s I-95 highway corridor.
The Scudder Falls bridge replacement project involves a heavily traveled 4.4-mile portion of the I-95 corridor from the Route 332/Yardley-Newtown Road interchange (Exit 49) in Bucks County and the Bear Tavern Road/Route 579 interchange (Exit 2) in Mercer County.
The nearly 55-year-old bridge and nearby interchanges are classified as functionally obsolete. Project elements include:
– Replace the four-lane Scudder Falls Bridge with a twin-span structure carrying six lanes of through traffic (three in each direction), and three auxiliary lanes (two northbound, one southbound) for traffic merging on and off the bridge.
– Overhaul the accident-prone Route 29/175 interchange (Exit 1) on the New Jersey side.
— Reconfigure the New Hope-Yardley/Taylorsville Road interchange (Exit 51) in Lower Makefield, Pa.. to improve the safety and efficiency of the interchange.
– Provide a bicycle/pedestrian walkway alongside the main river bridge connecting the recreational canal paths on both sides of the river.
– Construct full inside and outside shoulders on both replacement bridge spans, a current highway standard requirement. (The bridge’s inside shoulders will be sized to allow for future bus rapid transit service.)
– Install an all-electronic toll (AET) gantry and related infrastructure in the southbound direction consisting of high-speed E-ZPass tag readers and video cameras for license-plate billing.
Full construction activities are expected to get underway in early 2017. The project is expected to take up to four years to complete.
Information is available at www.scudderfallsbridge.com. A toll-free information/comment line is at 800-879-0849. 