South Jersey's Route 50 Bridge Project will use a faster ‘design-build' method

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]county.

[00:00:01]The team is getting ready for the busy season. The actions just getting started. Good times ahead.

[00:00:07]Just down the road from the Route 50 bridge, one of the many signs of summer is seeing more traffic cross here. For 75 years, it's been an essential connector both to summer fun and to higher ground during flooding. A vital connector that is showing its age and needs to be replaced. In order to get that done, the state is doing something new. It helps us move faster.

[00:00:32]It cuts the red tape.

[00:00:34]>> New Jersey's DOT commissioner says this project will be the first in the state to use a design-build approach, combining design and construction into one streamlined process, shaving years off the timeline. In the old way, it would have taken roughly about 6 to 7 years, ballparking.

[00:00:52]And now it's going to take about 2 and 1/2, 3 years. The commissioner says the scale and urgency of New Jersey's infrastructure needs requires them to think differently. The governor pointed out there are hundreds more bridges that are going to need to be replaced. And so that's why this design-build plan will help us do it quickly, and especially given some of the, you know, constantly rising prices nationally, if the faster we can do this, the better able we are to keep the price under control. Driving down the shore in the next few weeks, you might notice some minor prep work happening here, but the major construction, that's not starting until the fall. By design.

[00:01:31]We are very particular about making sure that people don't get impacted. So we have taken into consideration seasonal constraints. Once construction is underway, people can expect detours, lane closures, but the bridge won't close completely. The quicker that it goes to a good result, that would be lovely. Siobhan McCrudden, NBC 10 News.