Would you invite guests to stay at your place and then, after they’ve driven across the state to get there, leave them waiting on your doorstep for a half hour?
Of course not. But that’s what some of our shore towns do every Saturday morning in the summer.
The sight of cars sitting bumper to bumper on the mammoth new causeway leading into Ocean City from Somers Point each weekend is baffling. And the experience must be infuriating for people who’ve chosen to come spend their money in town.
The city needs some kind of plan to coordinate traffic coming into the island from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday, when weekly rentals turn over.
Letter writer Eugene Ross suggested recently that businesses in town might want to pitch in to pay for some traffic cops to man those intersections during those hours. That’s a great idea. It wouldn’t be very expensive, and summer officers could handle the job. The city could also coordinate its traffic lights better to make it easier to get onto the island.
Other shore towns should do the same thing. And how about someone to direct merging at the Garden State Parkway exits for Avalon and Sea Isle City? Those lines of cars that back up onto the parkway can’t be safe.
Please tell me there’s going to be some kind of plan by the time all the Route 52 causeway bridges into Ocean City are finished. Otherwise, the most expensive construction project in New Jersey will amount to nothing more than a very efficient funnel that has no way to drain. And to the summer visitors the island’s economy depends on, it will surely seem like a bridge to nowhere.
