NJT : For $40 million you kinda expect the project to be finished
It is amazing that NJ transit spent $40 million on the station and ignored the underpass. What’s even more amazing is that they spent money on a dozen flat screen monitors and electronic displays that only worked for a short period of time and have been dark even since.
Add to that new landcaping for the plaza and parking lot that was never tended to and allowed to die and/or become overgrown. A total waste of funds that could have been used to clean up the underpass instead.
I thought they would at least pave the lot and replace the mailbox that the mercenary snow plows knocked over. Not to mention paint the building and the retaining wall facing Franklin, and fix up the inside so it doesn’t look like a station in East Orange.
Not to mention the wheelchair ramp to nowhere at the south end of the center platform.
Someone at NJT should be in jail. All you have to do is look at the exit 15X approach to Secaucus station to know that someone in construction had a lot to say about the scope of that project. I suspect Ridgewood was the same. The more money you can spend on a project like that, the more you can steal.
NJT gave the Village the money last year to pave the lot.
The money is still on the 3rd floor.
15X is a joke. It’s a 2 mile exit where a quarter-mile would have sufficed. The way the entire junction project turned out, it is a humongous tribute to governmental waste and inefficiency. It is fitting that it is named after Frank Lautenberg.