Route 166 Final Paving On Tap This Week

TOMS RIVER, NJ — And on the 1,146th day (give or take), they will rest.

The state Department of Transportation announced the final paving of Route 166 — the final touches of the Route 166 road project — are scheduled to begin Monday night, May 13.

The final paving on the stretch from Route 37 to the Old Freehold Road intersection is scheduled for the overnight hours, beginning tonight and continuing through Thursday night into Friday morning, the NJDOT announcement said.

Route 166 will be closed in the area from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. nightly while the paving is completed.

The road project began March 28, 2016, when the construction barriers first were put in place to divert traffic while utility lines were moved, the jughandles reconstructed and a concrete barrier put in place between the northbound and southbound lanes of Route 166 from Highland Parkway south of Route 37 to Old Freehold Road.

The barriers on the north side of Route 37 finally were removed March 28, 2019, after three years that were rife with frustration and disruption for businesses, especially those on the portion of Route 166 north of Route 37.

The removal of the construction barriers was heralded by the owners of Schuster's Car Wash and Corinne Jewelers, who had been some of the most vocal critics of the slow progress on the project.

Larry Schuster, who submitted the project for recognition to the Guinness Book of World Records nominating it as "the slowest quarter-mile of road construction ever" handed out T-shirts in early April in celebration of the end of the construction. (Guinness officials turned down Schuster's tongue-in-cheek request in February.)

Last week, Ryan Blumenthal of Corinne Jewelers, which at various times mocked the project on its sign and in advertising ("Inconveniently Located, but Worth the Trip" was the message during the holiday shopping season in December) held a Mother's Day sale with giveaways that commemorated the end of the work.

The paving will eliminate the bumpy trips by motorists who have resumed using the stretch. Schuster said the traffic along the stretch has noticeably improved since the construction was completed.

While the paving is completed overnight, traffic will be detoured, with those seeking to go north on Route 166 detoured to Hooper Avenue northbound to the jughandle for Edken Avenue/Walnut Street and follow across Hooper Avenue to Old Freehold Road, turn right on Old Freehold Road and then left onto Mapletree Road to reach Route 166.

Those seeking to go south on Route 166 will be detoured onto Mapletree Road and from Mapletree Road can turn right onto Hooper Avenue.

NJDOT officials said once the paving is complete, the only remaining work on the $11.7 million project will be some landscaping and minor work that is expected to have minimal impact traffic.

The project was one of the most visible impacts of then-Gov. Chris Christie's 2016 shutdown of roadwork amid the fight to raise the state's gasoline tax to fund the Transportation Trust Fund. The 23-cent tax increase along with annual increases when the fund falls short was agreed to by the state Legislature in September 2016, and construction resumed that October. But the disruption left the state waiting for utility companies, including New Jersey Natural Gas, to come back to do their portion of the work on the project.

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