Crews broke ground Wednesday on a $400 million project to finally widen the last two-lane stretch of the Atlantic City Expressway, a 12.6-mile bottleneck that has frustrated shore-bound drivers for decades. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, NJDOT Commissioner Priya Jain, and local leaders joined the South Jersey Transportation Authority at a ceremony in Sicklerville to mark the start of construction.
The project stretches from milepost 31.6 near Interchange 31 in Winslow Township to milepost 44.2 at the Route 42 terminus in Washington Township, cutting across communities in Camden and Gloucester counties, according to STV Incorporated. Once finished, the work will give the entire 44.19-mile toll road three continuous travel lanes for the first time. As NBC10 Philadelphia reports, the project is expected to wrap in 2034, with the South Jersey Transportation Authority aiming to improve both travel predictability and driver safety along the corridor.
Governor Sherrill noted that summer weekend congestion makes the highway expansion long overdue for South Jersey families and businesses, according to Breaking AC. The expressway, built between 1962 and 1965, already saw its eastern section from milepost 31.6 to Atlantic City expanded to three lanes years ago, leaving this western segment as the road's last remaining two-lane chokepoint, per STV Incorporated.
Why This Stretch Became the Priority
A 2021 conceptual development study by the South Jersey Transportation Authority identified the 12.6-mile western segment as the most congested corridor on the entire expressway, concluding that recurring summer traffic queues contributed to a high rate of rear-end and sideswipe crashes. Per the same study, planners chose to add the new lane within the highway's existing median rather than acquire private right-of-way, according to NBC10 Philadelphia's reporting.
Stephen Dougherty, executive director of the South Jersey Transportation Authority, said the investment will create capacity and provide motorists with a safer, more reliable trip, per NBC10 Philadelphia. Dougherty added that more predictable travel times could benefit shore businesses and visitors who rely on the expressway each summer. Demand on the expressway continues to grow, the authority says, and officials maintain that additional capacity is necessary to keep traffic flowing.
Bridges and Overpasses Get a Rebuild, Too
The $400 million package goes well beyond paving a new lane. It includes upgrading two mainline bridges over Route 42, two mainline bridges over the Great Egg Harbor River, widening the Route 42 bridge over Sicklerville Road, and replacing the Sicklerville Road Overpass superstructure to raise vertical clearance, according to the project's official site. Those structural overhauls are meant to address longstanding geometric deficiencies and bring bridge clearances up to current standards.
In coordination with the expressway work, the New Jersey Department of Transportation is also extending an additional northbound lane on Route 42 between Exit 7 at Sicklerville Road and Exit 7B at College Drive, since Route 42 serves as the primary commuter link between the Philadelphia area and the expressway. Daniel Corrigan Jr., chief engineer for the South Jersey Transportation Authority, said the authority plans to add another right-turn lane at the Sicklerville Road exit, which currently sees backups spilling onto both Route 42 and the expressway. According to NBC10 Philadelphia, Corrigan said the added turn lane — which would let drivers turn right without waiting for the traffic light — would clear the highway quicker and help once the larger project gets underway.
Drivers Could See Relief as Soon as Next Summer
While the full project isn't expected to finish until 2034, NBC10 Philadelphia reports that drivers could see the first improvements as soon as next summer. The South Jersey Transportation Authority says construction traffic disruptions should be limited, though drivers will have to wait until the project wraps to actually use the new third lane.
Not everyone at the ceremony framed the fix as purely a construction problem. U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross suggested that regional congestion could ease without spending $400 million if drivers — particularly out-of-state motorists from Pennsylvania — simply kept right except when passing, as reported by the Press of Atlantic City. New Jersey traffic law already requires drivers to stay right unless overtaking another vehicle, a rule Norcross implied gets ignored often enough to worsen backups on its own.
Will a Third Lane Actually Fix Traffic?
Not every expert is convinced the new lane will solve the problem long-term. Robert Noland, director of the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University, studies induced demand — the phenomenon in which added road capacity can encourage more people to drive. Noland said reduced travel times can attract more drivers over time, eventually bringing traffic to a new equilibrium, according to NBC10 Philadelphia's reporting. In other words, the new lane could initially ease congestion, only to see traffic levels climb back up as more drivers take advantage of the shorter trip.
The widening is also just one piece of a larger overhaul of the expressway. The $400 million project is financed primarily through Transportation System Revenue bonds issued directly by the South Jersey Transportation Authority, rather than state gas tax revenue or general fund dollars, per the Tri-State Infrastructure News. Concurrent with the lane expansion, the authority is also converting the expressway into New Jersey's first completely cashless, all-electronic toll road, according to the New Jersey Alliance for Action, a move expected to further cut down on travel delays and idling once physical toll booths disappear.
Navigating Environmental Rules Near the Pinelands
Because the eastern edge of the work zone touches protected Pinelands lands, environmental permitting for the project required compliance with New Jersey Executive Order 215, including reviews by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Pinelands Commission. The Pinelands Protection Act imposes strict environmental standards on public works near the sensitive pine barrens ecosystem, a regulatory hurdle STV Incorporated notes the project had to clear before breaking ground.
For commuters who have watched congestion build along this corridor near the Sicklerville Road interchange, the groundbreaking marks the start of a long-promised fix. Whether a third lane permanently eases the shore-bound crunch or simply resets the baseline, as Noland's research suggests, will likely take years to answer — long after the ribbon-cutting fades from memory.
