Asbury Park Press

Trivia question: Which is most likely to happen first? Major traffic improvements coming to Route 9 in Lakewood or man building a space station on planet Jupiter?

It would be a mistake to bet against planet Jupiter.

Two public information sessions on proposed Route 9 improvements were hosted recently by the state Department of Transportation. But don’t get your hopes up. Relief, if it comes at all, won't be coming anytime soon.

Over the long life of Route 9, hopes have been dashed time and again, most recently in 2017, when the DOT announced that seven miles of the highway in Lakewood and Toms River would be repaved, and nine intersections on the narrow, two-lane stretch would be upgraded by widening and adding sidewalks.

Needless to say, it never happened.

Now, the DOT has trotted out plans to improve a 6.9-mile section of Route 9 between 2nd Street in Lakewood, just north of Lake Carasaljo, to Swain Avenue in Toms River, south of Route 70.

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Here’s the latest promise, delivered via a press release: “The project will address poor pavement conditions, reduce congestion and improve bicycle and pedestrian accommodations by widening eight existing signalized intersections and installing new signals in two locations — Oak Street and Broadway/Chateau Drive — adding left turn lanes at seven unsignalized intersections, widen the shoulder where feasible, and construct 2 miles of new ADA-compliant sidewalk and replace most of the existing sidewalk with a wider five-foot sidewalk.”

God willing.

Public outcry over the slow, hazardous slog on Route 9, which has become more maddening as growth has accelerated on and around the corridor, has periodically led to assurances by local officials and DOT representatives that improvements were on the drawing boards. But little has been done since the original path of Route 9 was carved out of the earth nearly a century ago.

Related: Promises, promises

Road improvements coming to Route 9, but not widening (2017)

3 ways to fix Route 9 instead of widening (2016)

Short-term improvements offered for Route 9 (2015)

The best hope for major relief came in the early 1970s, when a 38-mile-long superhighway was proposed between the Garden State Parkway in Toms River and the New Jersey Turnpike in South Brunswick. Dubbed the Alfred E. Driscoll Expressway, the project died soon after its chief proponent — Alfred E. Driscoll — died. That was the last time there were any serious proposals to build a new highway in Ocean County or widen Route 9.

So now the DOT has dangled a new proposal before our eyes. Even if the state follows through on its promise this time, construction won't begin until spring 2022 at the earliest. Asked why the DOT was unable to deliver on its 2017 promise to begin work in 2019, a spokesman attributed it to "complexities related to the acquisitions" of land. Unfortunately, the right-of-way acquisition process won't begin until the fall, the spokesman said. That doesn't augur well for meeting ts latest moving deadline.

Bottom line: Don't expect relief any time soon. As a matter of fact, you can count on things getting worse, thanks to unabated commercial and dense residential development along the Route 9 corridor between the lake and Route 70. And, if work actually does begin in the next two or three years, expect major delays. Further major delays.

In the meantime, one suggestion for the DOT: Instead of waiting for all the pieces to be in place before proceeding with all the upgrades: tackle the biggest bottlenecks first: Add left-turn signals to Central Avenue and Pine Street — before man settles on Jupiter.