Senator Robert Singer on Route 9 Widening Project Lakewood Scoop

we've had a lot of concerns about traffic in Lakewood as a growing Community you can all imagine uh that that getting around town is coming harder and harder and probably one of the major concerns we have is the fact that route 9 is not dualized from the lake South uh we had planned to have the commissioner of Transportation come down here and take a look at the issues in Lakewood and especially route nine but unfortunately right before uh the visit happened we had Sandy and as you can imagine the Department of Transportation has been been so busy trying to to fix those areas of the state that were devastated by the storm that has taken uh most of his attention with that being said we have been on top of both the commissioner's office and the governor's office saying look we have to start to look at the dualization of Route 9 likely we have to look at those improvements and how we can help the transportation since really very honestly other than Route 9 and the Garden State Parkway there is no other north-south Corridor in all of Ocean County and certainly route nine that runs right through the heart of Lake liquid the dualized is important to us both from the business perspective and also the the social perspective of people getting around town we prevailed the governor placed over six million dollars in the state budget uh to start looking at the utilization of Route 9 and start making certain uh uh improvements like they had done in the northern part but as you know we've done center lane turning Lanes we changed some streets to One Way only that is tremendously benefited the northern part of Route 9 in Lakewood they're going to be doing that to the southern part where it makes good sense and then look for the dualization factor and this is something both the governing body locally the county and certainly myself as a state representative and pushing for and we're thrilled the fact that the governor realized the importance of it and put six million dollars in the budget uh to see this this project start going forward and it's the beginning certainly not the end it's probably going to end up being a 70 or 80 million dollar project down the road but everything starts the first step and this six million dollars is a major first step in that direction