Local representatives advocate for more bridge, highway repair funds in Mt. Laurel

Senate President Steve Sweeney’s statewide effort to bring attention to New Jersey’s crumbling infrastructure and the failure of the Christie administration to develop a plan to fund the state’s Transportation Trust Fund continued last week with a stop in Burlington County at the Centerton Road Bridge in Mt. Laurel. Assemblyman Troy Singleton and Burlington County Freeholder Director Bruce Garganio joined Sweeney.

“Our Transportation Trust Fund is broke,” Sweeney said. “The state is supposed to maintain these bridges and highways and provide funding to them. These are the basic necessities that we have to provide as government. People have to be assured that infrastructure and transportation is safe and reliable.”

The Centerton Road Bridge was built in 1903 and has a sufficiency rating of 4 out of 100, the worst rating of any Burlington County bridge. It has had to be closed at times over the last few years in order to be repaired and is one of over a dozen structurally deficient bridges in the county.

“There has been numerous patchwork efforts done on this bridge over the years, but it has not been nearly enough,” Singleton said. “Burlington County residents can’t afford to continuously have this bridge closed for this kind of stopgap work. What we need is a plan to properly fund repairs for our roads and bridges. I stand in strong support of Senate President Sweeney’s statewide effort to bring attention to this serious issue.”

“We’re going to continue to put pressure on the governor until he puts forward a plan to show us how we’re going to fund the Transportation Trust Fund,” Sweeney said. “The governor doesn’t want to address it for one reason: This is a real tough issue that’s not going to go away. But our residents deserve to know that their government is doing everything possible to keep them safe.”