MORRISVILLE, PA – Motorists may encounter travel delays and traffic queuing in the southbound direction at the Trenton-Morrisville (Route 1) Toll Bridge this weekend and four additional weekends in February and March, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission announced today.
A series of construction activities related to a system-wide toll collection modernization project will be taking place at the bridge’s toll plaza. The work will reduce the toll-collection facility’s available capacity each respective weekend. This could potentially cause backups and moderate delays during busy driving periods when the toll plaza is reduced to four collection lanes instead of the usual five.
The bridge’s toll plaza is located in Morrisville, PA. Tolls are collected from southbound motorists only.
Construction activities at the toll plaza will be confined to a single lane each weekend that work is scheduled to take place. Work will commence 8 p.m. on Friday nights and continue on an expedited basis so the affected toll lane can be put back into service by 2 p.m. the following Monday – just in time to handle weekday evening peak commuter traffic.
The first of the five anticipated weekend closures is set to begin this Friday evening, February 17, and end Monday afternoon, February 20. The toll plaza is scheduled to have one fewer toll collection lane during the following four additional weekend periods:
- Feb. 24 to Feb. 27
- March 10 to March 13
- March 17 to March 20
- March 24 to March 27
(It will not be necessary to close a lane in the toll plaza on the weekend beginning March 3.)
The Trenton-Morrisville (Route 1) crossing carries the second highest traffic volumes of the Commission’s seven toll bridges. Traffic at the bridge has risen further in the wake of the January 20 emergency shutdown of the Delaware River (I-276) Bridge that connects the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes downstream.
Due to the heavier Route 1 traffic volumes arising from the ongoing closure of the turnpikes’ connector bridge, the Commission must now confine its toll collection system modernization work at its Morrisville toll plaza to weekend periods when peak traffic volumes are notably lower compared to weekday commuter volumes.
Due to this situation, the upcoming toll plaza work will be conducted on an intensified basis each applicable weekend. Tasks will include removal of outdated axle-counting treadles and adjoining concrete slabs, pouring and curing of new toll lane slabs, and installation of new, improved toll collection hardware such as E-ZPass toll tag readers, high-resolution cameras, and transaction displays.
Because some of the work will be conducted during overnight hours, the Commission has distributed notices to area residents informing them of the impending situation and associated noise impacts.
The work at the toll plaza is part of a sweeping modernization initiative aimed at upgrading virtually every aspect of the agency’s toll system: manual cash collections, conventional toll-lane E-ZPass transactions, and highway-speed open-road tolling. The design-build-maintain project, which began last year, is currently projected to reach completion in late-April.
All scheduled travel restrictions are subject to change due to weather, emergency, and traffic considerations. Motorists should reduce their speeds whenever traveling through designated work zones.
