“When it’s really bad, it just sits there,” complained one driver of the two-lane stretch of Route 17, where vehicles are often stopped because of bottlenecks. Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco says emergency services sometimes can’t get through the rush of cars. And traffic jams block commercial traffic. So it’s working to update 10-year-old engineering plans to widen and improve the two-lane bottleneck on Route 17, spending about $870,000 from the state.
It would add an additional north-south lane between the Garden State Mall and Essex Street, replace several aging bridges and build or upgrade ramps. Bergen County will also need to acquire some properties along the right-of-way to make way for the wider highway. The price and start date are unknown, but the county is asking for input from the public this site.
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