Middletown-Lincroft Road Closing Soon

There's another detour to a detour coming in a few hours. It involves the intermittently under-construction Middletown-Lincroft Road, which will be closed to traffic spanning Route 520 (Newman Springs Road) to Sunnyside Road from 7 p.m. this evening to 6 a.m. tomorrow, according to a Middletown Township advisory.

Since June the road has been open and closed in different spots pretty much every day. First it was due to . Then there was flooding from . Then the main construction was suspended because the thoroughfare was needed to funnel traffic through Middletown when detours of other main roads, such as Hubbard Avenue, were in effect due to the damage wrought by Irene.

Since then, the road has been intermittently closed and people have complained, especially since the start of school, that there is no easy way in and out of Middletown.

At a recent Township Committee meeting, Administrator Anthony Mercantante said it couldn't be helped and that while — emergent because of a large sinkhole that Irene created — was completed in an unusually swift five weeks by Monmouth County, Middletown-Lincroft Road would continue to have sporadic closures until its water main and other repairs could be completed. The timeline, he had said, was not confirmed.

However, because the road had to be kept open to accommodate traffic from other Irene-related detours, the process had been indefinitely stalled.

Since Hubbard re-opened Oct. 1, an alternate main thoroughfare is available, of interest especially to school-aged childrens' parents. But traffic is now being detoured from the Oceanic Bridge closure, on the other side of the township, as well.

Those who would normally take the bridge into Middletown from the Rumson area are now forced to either go through Red Bank and either down Route 35 or over the West Front Street Bridge. Traveling from the West Front Street Bridge into the township people have been directed to either go down Hubbard to Middletown-Lincroft or straight down West Front to Middletown-Lincroft. For this detour, they must go either down Route 35 or travel down West Front to Red Hill Road.

The township will advise when more Middletown-Lincroft Road closures become necessary.