Bike Lane Installed on Mercer County Roadway

Editor's Note: The following is a news release issued by the county administration.

By using county workers, Mercer County has installed bikeable shoulders on County Route 632 for less than 5 percent of the cost of contracting out for the work.  Final striping has just been completed.

“We had a lot going in our favor,” said C ounty Executive Brian Hughes.  “The estimate we got from a New Jersey Department of Transportation contractor was the standard cost for widening a roadway and came in at $1,795,397 for just over half a mile of road.  We were able to do the widening as part of a normal resurfacing project and our guys did it for only $82,300.  They also fixed some flooding and icing issues.”

“To me,” Hughes continued, “this is a story of how working in-house, with union workers, can often be more efficient than contracting out.  We already knew the storm drains were there and what the project limits could be, but the estimate for project engineering alone, to mostly tell us what we already knew, was almost three times higher than our total cost of the job.”

The widening of County Route 632, Pennington-Lawrenceville Road, between Pennington’s Main Street (CR 640) and Blackwell Road (CR 546) is a critical step implementing the county’s first designated bikeway.

Pennington Mayor Anthony Persichilli noted that “the County Route 546 bikeway will help residents of Pennington and Lawrenceville get to a number of parks.  Not only Washington Crossing, but Mercer Meadows, the Twin Pines soccer complex, Lawrence’s Central Park, and the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail.”

The CR 546 Bikeway was proposed to the Mercer County Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force by Tom Ogren, Pennington Borough councilman. 

Ogren said, “I am pleased that the county worked with towns and the New Jersey Department of Transportation to put this bike route in place.  Of all the safety improvements, widening CR 632 was the most important and the most expensive.  They did beautiful work.”