{"id":13957,"date":"2018-12-21T03:24:22","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T08:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=13957"},"modified":"2018-12-21T03:24:22","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T08:24:22","slug":"the-story-behind-paving-digging-and-the-future-of-mantoloking-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2018\/12\/the-story-behind-paving-digging-and-the-future-of-mantoloking-road\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Behind Paving, Digging And the Future of Mantoloking Road"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mantoloking<\/a>

Mantoloking Road, Dec. 19, 2018. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

When crews from New Jersey Natural Gas company began creating openings in Mantoloking Road, it looked like any other utility project. But for Brick residents, it was a surprise \u2013 especially since much of the busy thoroughfare had just been paved a couple of months earlier by Ocean County.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a travesty,\u201d said Brick Mayor John Ducey at a meeting of the township council this week. \u201cIt\u2019s a total waste of taxpayer money.\u201d<\/p>\n

County officials tell a much different story, and say they completed the paving project despite having known the gas utility would need access because the roadway was in such poor condition that drivers could no longer wait for resurfacing. John Ernst, the Ocean County Engineer, told Shorebeat this week that the most recent work by the gas company was only a small project to map out gas mains so they could be replaced anywhere between one or two years from now. That presented county officials with a tough decision: pave a road that desperately needed work and risk it being reopened, or make drivers wait up to two years as the road continued to crumble.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the county was working with a contractor that would have been responsible for paving the roadway, Ernst said, and as part of the usual planning process checked with utility companies to see if there were any projects on the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had some conversations with New Jersey Natural Gas and they told us they would be replacing a gas main and wanted us to hold off on paving the road, however we couldn\u2019t really do that because of all the complaints we were receiving from Brick over the condition of the road in that area,\u201d said Ernst.<\/p>\n

That presented a classic \u201cbetween a rock and a hard place\u201d scenario.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe road wouldn\u2019t have held up another winter because it was in such bad shape,\u201d said Ernst.<\/p>\n

Ernst\u2019s office came up with a plan. Instead of using a road construction contractor to pave, the county utilized its in-house paving team to resurface the road at a lower price. It was a larger job than the county usually takes on, but it was desperately needed, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pushed it up knowing that the gas company was going to come in in a year or two and put a new gas main in,\u201d Ernst said.<\/p>\n

\"Mantoloking<\/a>

Mantoloking Road at the Adamston Road intersection. (Credit: Google Maps)<\/p><\/div>\n

Brick Township\u2019s municipal government has an ordinance that sets a five-year moratorium on road openings after they\u2019ve been paved, but Mantoloking Road is a county road. The county has a similar policy, but had to make an exception due to a combination of the present condition of the road and the long period of time \u2013 potentially two years \u2013 before the gas mains would be replaced. Because asphalt plants close for the winter in New Jersey, had Mantoloking Road not been paved before winter, there would have been no opportunity for the county to pave it until next spring or summer, meaning it could have become a pot-hole disaster area if left alone this winter.<\/p>\n

The work New Jersey Natural Gas is performing right now is largely completed, and involved digging \u201cinvestigative test pits\u201d in order to generate a 3D map of the underground environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re doing some investigative test pits to find out where their gas main is now to make sure there are no conflicts with any other utilities underground in anticipation of a main replacement,\u201d said Ernst.<\/p>\n

The county has told New Jersey Natural Gas that the road must be fully repaved after the mains are replaced. The county conditioned approval of a permit to open the road on an agreement that the gas company would do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, if they only [dug] a narrow trench, they would be require to patch the trench plus one foot on either side, but because it was just paved the road, they\u2019ve agreed \u2013 and we made it a condition \u2013 that they repave the road,\u201d said Ernst.<\/p>\n

In the mean time, he said, the small areas that were reopened will be seamlessly repaired.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can use a hot mix and blend it in with an infrared machine to make the patch blend in perfectly,\u201d said Ernst. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to see those areas, and they\u2019re going to restore those in a proper fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision to pave the road this year was one that had to be made, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have lasted, so we had to do something,\u201d said Ernst. \u201cThe gas company understood that we had to pave the road and they\u2019re going to have to get the road back to where it had been.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe work well with the gas company on all of our projects and all of their projects, and there is a lot of cooperation between the two entities.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When crews from New Jersey Natural Gas company began creating openings in Mantoloking Road, it looked like any other utility project. But for Brick residents, it was a surprise \u2013 especially since much of the busy thoroughfare had just been paved a couple of months earlier by Ocean County. \u201cThis is a travesty,\u201d said Brick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[24,1933,2071,78],"class_list":["post-13957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-ocean-county","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-mantoloking-road","tag-new-jersey-natural-gas","tag-paving"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/IMG_4007.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-3D7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}