LAMBERTVILLE-NEW HOPE: One-way traffic restrictions for free bridge next week

Off-peak and overnight travel restrictions will be employed next week at the New Hope-Lambertville "free" bridge.
The restrictions are needed to allow engineers and consultants to assess different kinds of electronic sensors that could be used to gauge the bridge’s long-term structural health, according to the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
They tests will help the commission better understand how overweight and oversized vehicles affect the agency’s aging weight-restricted crossings.
The travel-restricted periods will affect motorists using the bridge in either direction.
They are scheduled for:
Monday to Thursday (Sept. 15 to 18) daily from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 to 3 p.m. The bridge will be restricted to single alternating lane of traffic controlled by a flagger at each end. These closures spread across four days will allow for the installation of bridge monitoring sensors on different sections of the bridge.
In the early morning hours (1 to 5 a.m.) on Friday, Sept. 19, intermittent traffic stoppages lasting up to 15 minutes will be used to allow for pilot tests of the installed monitoring devices.
Motorists planning to travel across the bridge during above-mentioned periods are advised to allow extra time to reach their destinations. The travel restrictions are subject to change due to weather, emergency and traffic considerations. Motorists should reduce their speeds whenever traveling through a designated work zone.
The work at the bridge is being conducted as part of a bridge monitoring system study for select vehicular bridges project that the commission approved in May. The project will evaluate how sensor-type technologies could be used to assess the effects of heavy loads at some of the agency’s oldest bridges. Ultimately, the study could determine the feasibility of using sensors as a detection, enforcement and early-warning tool at the agency’s weight-restricted bridges.
The commission operates seven toll bridges and 13 toll-supported bridges, two of which are pedestrian-only spans.
The steel-truss superstructure between New Hope and Lambertville is considered a good testing ground for bridge monitoring sensors because of its age (the trusses turned 110 years old in July) and because the bridge experiences periodic overweight truck violations more frequently than many of the commission’s other aging bridges.
The New Hope-Lambertville Bridge has had a four-ton weight restriction since 1971. This load rating was instituted because the carried heavy traffic volumes — including large trucks — as the former river crossing point for U.S. Route 202 between 1935 and 1971. The bridge also sustained some structural damage during the ice flood of 1936 and the record-setting flood of 1955.