by Daniel Rodrick,
Councilman, Toms River Township
Nearly 25,000 motorists use that intersection each day and to make matters worse, shoppers are avoiding the area. These businesses depend on the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas for a large percentage of their annual sales and they employ a lot of people. ShopRite says that they’ve lost 20% of their sales as a result of this construction project and I’m confident that the impact is worse for non essential shopping.
Residents and business owners are very unhappy and continue to complain. Freeholder Vicari also said that the Department of Transportation threatened to move the contractor up to Monmouth County if we continued to complain. These threats are outrageous and completely unacceptable!
The DOT and the Governor should be ashamed about the way they’re treating Toms River. Governor Murphy owes Toms River an Apology. In just 10 months he’s raised our taxes, cut $20 Million from our schools and his DOT is threatening prolong this traffic situation if we continue to complain about the negative impact it’s having on our local economy during this important Holiday Shopping Season.
This project is going on for 3 years, it’s cost taxpayers $12 Million and the County Engineer says it wont increase capacity. The State of New Jersey can’t seem to do anything right. Governor Murphy needs to apologize to Toms River, and he needs to get his Department of Transportation in line. The DOT needs to get a crew back out there to finish this job already. Three years is long enough.
Sincerely,
Toms River Councilman