Newtown Firm Wins $11.8M Contract To Convert Bridge To Cashless Tolls

LOWER MAKEFIELD, PA — A Newtown Township-based employee-owned engineering, construction and management company has won an $11.8 million contract to convert the Route 202 New Hope-Lambertville toll bridge to an open road cashless all-electronic tolling system by summer 2026.

At its meeting on Monday, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC) awarded the low bidder, PFK-MARK III, Inc. of Newtown, for a not-to-exceed amount of $11,863,715.00. A corresponding construction management/inspection services contract was awarded to STV, Inc. of Lawrenceville, N.J., for a not-to-exceed amount of $2,476,202.84.

The project will involve the removal of the bridge’s former cash-collection toll plaza and construction of an overhead toll gantry outfitted with E-ZPass toll tag reading equipment and cameras to record the license plates of non-E-ZPass-equipped motorists. The project also will include repairs to the bridge’s Pennsylvania abutment backwall, which is cracked and rotating.

The project’s open-road-tolling conversion, however, is the significant work element.

The project would mark the first time that a former DRJTBC cash-toll-collection facility is removed and replaced with a highway-speed all-electronic toll gantry. It’s anticipated that the process executed at New Hope-Lambertville will serve as the prototype for subsequent open-road tolling conversions of six other commission toll bridges with former conventional cash-collection toll plazas.

Like many other toll agencies across the country and around the globe, the Commission has stopped accepting cash toll payments. Cashless AET collections – currently consisting of E-ZPass with lower rates and TOLL BY PLATE with higher rates – are safer, better for the environment, and less expensive to collect than manual in-lane cash transactions.

Cash collections ended in June 2024 at three low-traffic-volume toll bridges – New Hope-Lambertville, Milford-Montague (Route 206), and Portland Columbia (Routes 46, 611, 94) – and in January 2025 at four high-traffic-volume toll bridges – I-78, Easton-Phillipsburg (Route 22), Delaware Water Gap (I-80), and Trenton-Morrisville (Route 1). (NOTE: The Commission’s Scudder Falls (I-295) Toll Bridge opened in 2019 with open road AET in place).

The major tasks for the New Hope-Lambertville project are:

• Remove the Route 202 northbound roadway jog at the tolling point and reconstruct the median barrier at that location;
• Replace existing guide rail with single-face concrete barrier;
• Demolish the former cash-collection toll plaza facility and cap existing tunnel egress stairs;
• Install a single-span monopipe gantry with concrete support columns;
• Demolish and reconstruct the bridge’s PA abutment backwall;
• Remove, rehabilitate, and reset the tooth dam in the abutment’s header;
• Demolish approach slabs, median barrier, wingwall extension and parapets up to retaining wall;
• Reconstruct concrete bridge approach slabs, concrete median barrier, and concrete parapets;
• Replace the PA abutment drainage trough and additional existing drainage inlets to align with reconfigured roadway footprint.

Once the overhead toll gantry is erected, the installation, calibration and testing of tolling equipment will be carried out by crews from TransCore under a prior multi-year Commission agreement stemming from a South Jersey Transportation Authority AET system procurement.

Project construction at New Hope-Lambertville (Route 202) is expected to begin in the summer and continue for slightly more than a year. The bridge will remain open in both directions throughout construction, but a series of lane closures and traffic shifts will be needed to carry out project tasks. Information on specific travel restrictions will be announced at a later date. All project tasks, including roadway realignment and abutment backwall repair, is expected to be completed by late winter/early spring 2027.

The New Hope-Lambertville (Route 202) Toll Bridge opened to traffic in 1971. Tolls originally were collected in both directions. The toll plaza was partially demolished with the remaining toll-both lanes converted to one-way collections in the southbound (PA-bound) direction only on December 1, 2002.

The bridge carried an average 13,800 vehicles per day in both directions during 2024. The New Hope-Lambertville (Route 202) facility holds the distinction as the Commission toll bridge with the highest E-ZPass usage percentage. In 2024 alone, 92.65 percent of toll transactions were paid through E-ZPass at the location.