Rt. 92 Quick Facts

Route 92 Quick Facts

“Asphalt in search of a purpose.” - Mike Gerrard

Route 92 would:

  • Waste hundreds of millions of New Jersey’s dollars that are badly needed for "smart growth" highway projects. Some of these already-planned projects include repairing the state’s 2,000 deteriorated bridges and Governor’s six-point plan to improve highway safety, rail freight transportation, and to create 20,000 Park and Ride spaces throughout New Jersey.

    Rest Area - Building Closed

    New Jersey can’t even afford to keep the restrooms open on the roads we already have. Why should we raise tolls and taxes to build more roads that we don’t even need?
  • Subsidize sprawl throughout a four-county region
  • Clog Route 1 and our local roads with 20,000 or more additional vehicles per day.
  • Bring every place in Middlesex, Somerset, Mercer, and Hunterdon Counties 6.7 miles closer to Turnpike traffic
    • Including Kingston, Rocky Hill, Griggstown, Blackwells Mills, East Millstone, Montgomery, Hopewell Borough, Hopewell Township, Hillsborough, Manville, and East Amwell
    • Even including Princeton, Plainsboro, and West Windsor, where the local politicians support 92!
  • Be Part 1 in a three-part highway segmentation plan to evade Federal environmental laws
    • Part 2: 92 gets extended from Route 1 to Montgomery Township. NJDOT already owns the land to build it. (They're just waiting for the right time.)
    • Part 3: "Interstate 206." 206 gets the "Route 1 treatment" from Montgomery all the way up to 287 in Somerville.
    • NJDOT advocated parts 2 and 3 as far back as 1978:
      • Letter, Frank Winters to J.F. Andrews: "It will be important that the Route 92 study begin as soon as possible in order to coordinate with the Route 206 study and to make sure the construction for the two projects is completed reasonably close together. This would avoid traffic problems that would result if Route 206 were completed without Route 92."
    • More recently, the Middlesex-Somerset-Mercer Planning Association (now Regional Planning Partnership) advocated Part 2 of this plan; see details here
    • Beyond that: who knows?
  • Destroy irreplaceable wetlands
  • Pollute the recharge area of the smallest (and most vulnerable) aquifer in the state
  • Endanger dozens of scenic and historic communities
  • Destroy Green Acres land in Plainsboro, including the Perrrine Tract, adjacent to the New Jersey Audubon Society’s Plainsboro Preserve
  • Fail to relieve traffic problems in the communities which bear its burden
    • The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission predicted that, by the year 2020, building Route 92 would only bring intersections below “problem” levels along two roads in Plainsboro and short segments of Route 35. (At least one of these roads has been improved since the DVRPC’s study was done.)
    • In 1998, the EPA concluded: "Of the 36 potential applications/times examined which compares the build and no-build alternatives, only six show an improvement of greater than one LOS [level of service] category for the build alternative.”
  • Bombard our homes with heavy truck traffic
  • Be a publicly-funded private driveway for the sprawl industry, including
    • Princeton University's for-profit development arm, Princeton Forrestal Associates, strongly supports 92. Princeton Forrestal’s interest in building 92 is to funnel traffic to its existing Forrestal Village properties and its planned Princeton Nursery Lands and Sarnoff property office developments
    • Sarnoff Corporation. Sarnoff has re-zoned its lands for up to 2.8 million additional square feet of office space. Sarnoff has sold 90 acres of this land to Princeton University. This sale was contingent on getting approval from West Windsor Township for the zoning change, and the full buildout is contingent on the Millstone Bypass or the functional equivalent being built. The Sarnoff property lies on Route 1, within a mile of the western terminus of Route 92.
    • The Bloomberg Financial Corp .in Montgomery, which is planning to add 3,000 additional employees to their facility. Montgomery is opposing Route 92.
    • Bristol-Meyers-Squibb in Hopewell. An expansion of the BMS facility in Hopewell Township  by nearly 2 million square feet will impact land use, water consumption,  wastewater treatment requirements, and traffic. 92 will be a conduit for traffic to Hopewell, including BMS. Hopewell is opposing Route 92.
    • These and many other developers and large corporations are eager to mine our last remaining open space.

      The historic Kingston Mill, on Carnegie Lake. Kingston, one of New Jersey's "Vanishing Villages," is at risk from Route 92 traffic and sprawl.

Route 92 would not:

  • Pay for itself from tolls
    • A one-way toll would have to be $3.50 to pay off a 30-year loan for 92 at 6% interest.
      • This is more than the current toll from Hightstown to Newark Airport!
      • And it's to go six miles - when there's a free road only a mile away that goes the same place!
      • And this is just what the Turnpike Authority's numbers say. The Turnpike has a bad history of controlling its costs. Working from E-ZPass figures, the price could easily double to $7.00 to go six miles.
      • Who would pay it?
  • Relieve problem traffic in the impacted communities
    • Including the communities whose politicians support 92
  • Use our dollars wisely
  • Promote fiscal responsibility in New Jersey government
  • Get the state of New Jersey out of the business of subsidizing sprawl.
  • Preserve the land it goes over. (How would you like to live under a turnpike bridge?)
  • Be mitigated by wetlands remediation
  • Be useful at all!
    • Middlesex County Route 522, a free road, already does everything that the 92 toll road is supposed to!
  • Function as a bypass for Princeton, Plainsboro, or West Windsor
    • It'll just attract more through traffic and sprawl construction!

Can you help us stop 92?
Please contact us at no92@verizon.net.