Vehicles backed up along Riverside Avenue earlier today. Below, utility crews working on West Front Street, a portion of which is closed to traffic. (Click to enlarge)
Snow-clogged streets and work to replace a snapped utility pole on West Front Street is causing major traffic tie-ups in and around Red Bank Tuesday morning.
Police shut down West Front from Broad Street to Maple Avenue to enable the repair work, which was still underway as of 10:15a with no estimated time of completion yet available, said police Captain Darren McConnell.
Partly as a result of the shutdown, traffic was backed up on northbound Broad, eastbound West Front and southbound Riverside Avenue all the way across the Cooper Bridge into Middletown. A Red Bank municipal employee stuck in the tie-up told redbankgreen he’d been inching along for half an hour.
Police on Spring Street asking residents to dig out their cars so plows and cars can pass. (Click to enlarge)
Also contributing to the tie-up is the fact that Water Street “is basically down to one lane” because of ice conditions, McConnell said. The state Department of Transportation, which is responsible for plowing there, has been alerted, he said.
Elsewhere in town, police are going door-to-door on Spring Street asking residents to dig out and remove cars that continue to impede snow plows, McConnell said. He said the same effort is being made on North Bridge Avenue.
“Right now, our major issue is we don’t have enough tow trucks,” he said.
On a walking tour of town, redbankgreen found most of the cars that were stranded yesterday morning had been removed. Exceptions were a minivan left on the northbound approach to Cooper Bridge and the northbound entrance to Riverside Avenue, off West Front.
