Hillsborough expected more from bypass.
We’re probably not the only ones in Hillsborough scratching our heads and wondering what happened to the Route 206 Bypass, after looking at the plans presented last week.
Since the mid-1990s, Hillsborough’s future has rested on the construction of the bypass and the resulting change of Route 206 from Old Somerville Road to the Montgomery border to become our Main Street.
Commuter traffic on Route 206 moving through Hillsborough to get somewhere else has been clogging the road, and the thinking has been that once we move the commuter traffic off our main street, we’ll be able to create a semblance of an old-fashioned downtown.
And in order to prevent the bypass from opening the southern part of the township to development, the bypass was going to offer only one exit on its way south: Amwell Road.
This, then-DOT Commissioner Jamie Fox said in 2002 when the state removed traffic lights at Hillsborough and Homestead roads from the bypass plan, fit in with Smart Growth planning and protected Hillsborough’s open space in the southern part of the township.
Sometime between then and now, those goals were chucked in light of fiscal reality in favor of a road with two traffic lights that ends at Mountainview Road.
We understand Hillsborough’s acceptance of its "half a loaf" we will get our main street and town center, but we believe the new design is going to give Hillsborough much more.
For example, township officials are intent on developing more commercial areas in town and it’s clearly going to happen in some places along the bypass route such as near the light at Hillsborough Road, and the route’s terminus at Mountainview Road.
And the research and development zone at the GSA Depot on Mountainview Road may grow to encompass more of the site officials won’t rule out allowing more of the depot to be developed.
The new plan for "East Route 206" is for a two-lane highway from Amwell Road to Mountainview Road similar to the current route.
State traffic engineers assured Hillsborough officials this is going to meet all the traffic needs for decades to come. Pardon our doubts, but we’ve been to enough Planning Board meetings to say traffic engineering seems at best an art and at worst a method of justifying whatever goal is at hand.
The new road is not at all what residents have been told was in the works, and we wonder how much of this residents bargained for.
Township officials believe the state’s new design is not an offer it’s what the state will build. That or nothing at all.
Township Administrator Kevin Davis notes Hillsborough is willing to compromise to get the project built while still achieving the main goal of creating the town center and Main Street.
We just hope we haven’t compromised too much.

