The state Department of Transportation’s final phase of the Causeway expansion and rehabilitation project can’t come soon enough for those hoping it will alleviate the traffic gridlock that Long Beach Island, specifically that stalling northbound in Ship Bottom, is experiencing this summer.

“It’s not even getting off the Island,” Mayor William Huelsenbeck acknowledged recently. “It’s if you want to go north, you have to wait in line. People are stuck on this end of the Island.”