TRENTON, N.J. — The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC) today announced it has hired an engineering firm to design an open-road cashless toll-collection facility for the agency’s Trenton-Morrisville (Route 1) Toll Bridge between Trenton, N.J. and Morrisville, PA.
The envisioned three-lane facility currently is expected to be located between the existing toll plaza and the bridge’s Pennsylvania abutment. The new facility would consist of an overhead gantry outfitted with toll-assessment equipment and cameras to process all-electronic toll (AET) transactions in the southbound direction (vehicles crossing the bridge from New Jersey to Pennsylvania).
The Commission ended cash toll collections at the bridge in January. Motorists currently must reduce speeds and drive through the bridge’s old five-lane toll-collection plaza to pay tolls either with E-ZPass or via TOLL BY PLATE billings sent through the mail. The bridge annually handles the second or third highest number of vehicular crossings in any given year. In 2024, an average 52,900 vehicles per day used the 73-year-old bridge.
The Commission’s bi-state board of policy-setting Commissioners met on Monday (July 28) in Yardley, PA. and unanimously approved a professional services contract with AtkinsRéalis USA Inc. of Edison, N.J. to design the new toll-collection facility. The contract, for a not-to-exceed amount of $3,357,885.85, also requires the engineering firm to design plans for removing the bridge’s old cash-collection toll plaza and reconfiguring the nearby Route 1/Pennsylvania Avenue highway interchange in Morrisville.
Design work on the Trenton-Morrisville Toll Bridge All Electronic Tolling (AET) and Pennsylvania Avenue Interchange Project is scheduled to begin sometime in August and reach completion by early summer 2026. At the earliest, construction could begin in late fall 2026.
The project would mark the second time the Commission replaces one of its seven former legacy cash-collection toll-booth plazas with an all-electronic tolling gantry. Currently, a Commission contractor is removing three of the four old cash toll booth lanes at the agency’s New Hope-Lambertville (Route 202) Toll Bridge in preparation for a highway-speed open-road tolling gantry at that location. The remaining toll booth lane is expected to remain in service until the new two-lane electronic tolling gantry is completed and tested sometime next year.
The Trenton-Morrisville Toll Bridge’s open-road tolling conversion, however, is expected to be a more challenging undertaking due to the location’s high traffic volumes, property limitations, and roadway geometry.
While the old cash toll plaza’s removal and replacement with an open-road toll gantry is likely to alleviate congestion and queuing, reduce noise, and improve air quality, there is a likelihood that vehicle speeds will increase. Noting this change in traffic conditions, the Commission decided to make a reconfiguration of the Route 1/Pennsylvania Avenue interchange a part of the electronic toll gantry planning process along with safety improvements from the toll gantry to the nearby interchange.
Like many other toll agencies across the country and around the globe, the Commission is transitioning its entire network to cashless AET collections, which 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). The Commission’s current timeline for completing system-wide cashless toll collection conversions is 2032. (NOTE: The Commission’s Scudder Falls (I-295) Toll Bridge opened in 2019 with open road AET in place).
The Trenton-Morrisville Toll Bridge is the Commission’s second oldest toll bridge, originally constructed and opened in 1952. It is a twelve-span, simply supported composite-steel-girder and concrete-deck structure with an overall length of 1,324 feet. The granite-faced piers and abutments are reinforced concrete.
