Geraud Avenue: A bridge over troubled waters

Are you a gambling person? What are the odds that the DOT directive on bridges will resolve the fate of the long-closed Geraud Avenue bridge between Plainfield and North Plainfield?

According to a recent Ledger story, owners of all NJ bridges (including Counties), must make sure spans comply with national standards by the end of September.

Does that mean that the long-unresolved matter of whether to reopen or eliminate the Geraud Avenue bridge, at the rear of the Drake House property, will finally be resolved?

The bridge, one of the oldest crossings over the Green Brook at the spot that eventually became Plainfield, was closed after the flooding associated with Hurricane Floyd in September, 1999.

The Geraud Avenue bridge was 'temporarily' closed in 1999.
(Click on image to enlarge.)

The maintenance of bridges between the two towns is an interesting compromise, since they join not only two separate communities, but two separate counties -- Union and Somerset.

Here's the deal: Maintenance expenses are jointly shared by the counties. However, bridges EAST of Somerset Street are maintained by Union County; those WEST of Somerset Street are maintained by Somerset County.

When the Geraud Avenue bridge was closed as an emergency measure, the two counties and the two towns held a series of meetings to decide what to do.

The proposed plan for abandoning the bridge.
(Click on image to enlarge.)

I recall being at one such meeting in North Plainfield's Vermeule House community center in 2000. Somerset County and North Plainfield were in favor of permanently closing the bridge. Union County, as I recall, deferred to Plainfield. And there the matter has sat for the last seven years.

Basically, Plainfield has been unable to decide conclusively what it would like to do.

Permanently abandoning the bridge would ease the traffic flow in the West Front Street Marino's redevelopment plan area, where THREE streets tee into Front Street (Plainfield, Geraud and Sycamore Avenues).

I recall being told that DOT would view the closing of the Geraud Avenue bridge as a favorable circumstance in planning for traffic control as the Marino's site is developed -- meaning that one traffic light at Plainfield Avenue would suffice, as at present.

A plaque notes the first bridge was built in 1804.
(Click on image to enlarge.)

But, if Geraud were to be left open to filter traffic down from Route 22 through North Plainfield to a future supermarket and strip mall, the whole traffic control scenario on Front Street would be much more complicated, requiring multiple traffic lights and essentially throwing a monkey wrench into the flow of the street, which is also Route 28, a state highway.

In all of this, there is something of a 'sweetener' on the table for Plainfield -- I recall a figure of somewhere around $1 million being offered for giving up the crossing, whose first bridge was erected in 1804.

Will the deadline imposed by the DOT speed up a resolution of the long-standing impasse?

Are you a gambling person?

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More info --

• DOT Directive: "Crackdown on upkeep of bridges"
• Pulaski Skyway: "$10M facelift for 'substandard' Pulaski Skyway starts today"

-- Dan Damon

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