NJ Portway

An accomplishment of NJ Governor Christy Whitman and her Transp Commissioner James Weinstein has been to get the first Portway project under construction. That’s the Doremus Avenue bridge, a key crossing in a complicated and important scheme to provide a network of modern dedicated truck routes between the many ports, railheads, and major warehousing centers in northern New Jersey. Much drayage currently occurs on heavily congested, poor mixed traffic and signalized routes. The Portway system offers the opportunity to provide freeflow customized truck routes to improve effciency of major freight movements. This is the principal freight-yard of the 18m pop greater-New York area, and matched only in scale by the LA ports/southcentral LA, and the southside of Chicago.

Portway has major implications for the NJ Turnpike, with at least four new or considerably changed interchanges. It may at some point need toll financing of parts of the new truck route network. Portway extends 25km (16mi) north-south from the Trumbull St Yard of CSX in southern Elizabeth at the Turnpike’s IC-13 to Little Ferry Yard near IC-18 of the Turnpike, and involves east west links of significance also. The Doremus Av bridge will be the first major bridge built to new ‘load and resistance factored design’ specs from AASHTO and will carry heavy instrumentation to classify and weigh trucks and monitor loads. (Robert James NJDOT 609 530 2898)