A significant construction site has started at the “fork” formed where Route 42 and the Atlantic City Expressway split off in Washington Township. This is the start of the Washington Township located Route 42 Improvement Project.
Note: This current construction effort has nothing to do with the future plans to add additional lanes to the Atlantic City Expressway.
Specifically, this construction site area will be a large water management basin… but I go into more details below, including that carved out slot in the woods across the AC Expressway.
The last week or so my messages (and comments online) have been lighting up with people wanting to know what the large, active construction site is on Route 42! Consider that 10s of thousands of commuters a day travel those roadways so the activity gets a lot of attention!
I first wrote about this now $72 million project back in April of 2023, which will completely rebuild 4 miles of the highly traveled Route 42 (Black Horse Pike) roadway through the core of Washington township’s commercial district… down to Kennedy Ave in Williamstown. This effort will include the Cross Keys Road intersection.
This is a very similar project to what is being done on Route 70 through Cherry Hill and Evesham.
Road surfaces will be rebuilt, drainage will be improved, and new synchronized/computerized traffic signals will be installed as part as the effort.
When I first wrote about the Washington Township Route 42 project 2.5 years ago it was planned to start in 2025, but in a surprising move NJDOT moved it up an entire year with the efforts starting this past Spring of 2024. Some activity had been seen over the summer, but it’s only been very recent that significant construction efforts have started to take place.
I have not yet done a “deep dive” explanation of what this Route 42 project is all about.
That being said this article is not that full overview. I am waiting to get some additional details back from NJDOT and I will likely do an article and video later this week.
So for right now what I’m going to focus on “what is this construction site at Route 42 and the Atlantic City Expressway”
Construction Site – Route 42 and AC Expressway
As mentioned the construction site is located where the Atlantic City Expressway forks off of the Black Horse Pike.
There are actually 2 construction areas in play right now.
One is the large and very noticeable clearing that is taking place at the fork where the Atlantic City Expressway starts and splits off from route 42.
The other is a small cleared out channel in the woods of the Gloucester Township side of the roadway.
For the main construction site, several large equipment pieces are seen actively removing the topsoil and have started digging deeper basins. In the area of the southbound underpass of Route 42 it appears they are removing a large portion of the hill formed by the AC Expressway entrance.
From the drone images you can see that they are also starting to dig what appears to be a large hole along Route 42 Southbound.
This is the start of the effort to build the large water management basin, which will basically fill this entire plot of land!
Literally a large hole to collect water which will be diverted to it from the Route 42 road surfaces.
Do we need this water basins? I am not sure… it’s beyond my level of expertise. I will say though that environmental regulations have advanced significantly in the last 70 years… and likely a portion of the need for these basins is more about “if you are rebuilding the roadway today, you need to meet the DEP standards for today, and in this case it means… proper water management”
While it is expected that that basin will be able to manage most of the necessary water control needs for the Route 42 roadway in the area, engineers have designed an additional overflow outlet… which brings us to the cut-out in the woods.
To further protect the roadway from flooding incidents this basin will be connected to the South Branch of the Big Timber Creek, which is in the wooded properties that run between the Atlantic City Expressway and Sicklerville Road in Gloucester Township.
That clearing in the woods was done to allow construction of what appears to be a water outlet pipe.
So I would think this would is NOT meant to be a consistent flow of water into the creek, but is there in the rare cases where that that large basin were to fill up… the overflow water then has a place to go.
My drone shots from within the woods at the Creek edge show that a water management outlet pipe has already been developed. It still needs to be developed around/under the 4 roadways to connect to the basin.
Hopefully in the next week I will have a larger project overview on this.