The project will ease traffic backups, authority officials said. “Everyone knows it’s the right thing to do. The back-ups start where the third lane stops,” U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1st Dist., said during a media event held in Winslow Township.

The $180 million project is in the preliminary design phase and on the way to a 2024 groundbreaking. A third lane will be built in both directions along the expressway’s last two-lane section, said Stephen F. Dougherty, the authority’s executive director.