Route 5 Reopens Between Fort Lee and Edgewater

After about a month of a full closure and resulting detours on a three-tenths of a mile stretch of road between Fort Lee and neighboring Edgewater, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) reopened the section of highway to traffic over the weekend, NJDOT officials said.

Route 5 between the Fort Lee Pump Station and Undercliff Avenue had been completely closed to traffic since early August for safety purposes during “rock scaling operations,” a project to remove and stabilize loose rock along the western edge of the highway.

NJDOT and its contractor, Merco Inc., are now resuming daily closures of Route 5 westbound—or traffic heading from Edgewater to Fort Lee—from 7:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. on weekdays, “for construction activities,” officials said, but the eastbound lanes heading out of Fort Lee will remain open.

"Rock scaling involves having those guys actually repelling up and down the rock face itself, removing loose rock and installing rock dowels and so on,” NJDOT spokesman Tim Greeley told Patch in August. “So due to the sort of geography of the area and the winding nature of Route 5, it became necessary for us to enact this closure to get that work done.”

Trucks, in addition to all traffic during the weekday closure hours, heading west on Route 5 from Edgewater to Fort Lee will be detoured north on River Road to Bruce Reynolds Boulevard in Fort Lee, west to Martha Washington Way, south to Palisades Avenue and south to the convergence with Route 5.

NJDOT will continue to use “variable message signs” to keep drivers informed of changes to traffic patterns and detours during the ongoing construction, according to officials.

Work on the $3.8 million project began in early July, when NJDOT began detours for all large truck traffic. The road was then partially closed to all traffic during off-peak, daytime hours and fully closed for about that past four weeks. NJDOT says the project is slated for completion by late-summer 2012.