New Jersey's Department of Transportation is taking bids on roughly 38 miles of fiber optic cable and conduit along Interstate 78, and the agency put a number on it before anyone opened a proposal: $20,000,001 to $35,000,000. Bids come in over the internet until 10 a.m. on October 15 and get opened at NJDOT's Trenton headquarters at 1035 Parkway Avenue.

The job runs I-78 from milepost 3.90 to milepost 41.80, across Warren, Hunterdon and Somerset counties and fifteen municipalities. The contract number is 004186010, DP No. 26600, UPC No. 186010. Beyond the cable pull, the work connects existing intelligent-transportation devices to the new fiber, upgrades and replaces some of them, and installs new dynamic message signs, camera surveillance systems and roadside units.

“This is a long, thin, production-rate job where the money is in trenching, boring and pulling.”

The quantities are where the shape of this job shows up. NJDOT lists 251,260 linear feet of Type G fiber optic cable and another 7,570 feet of Type E — roughly 49 miles of cable in total. It also lists 211,287 linear feet of ITS conduit Type-A, which is about 90 percent of the 234,355 feet of conduit across all four types on the schedule. Against all that linear work sit just 256 junction boxes, 19 ITS foundations, 19 roadside units and 9 message signs.

That ratio is the tell for anyone pricing this. This is not a structures job dressed up as electrical work — it is a long, thin, production-rate job where the money is in trenching, boring and pulling, and where the daily footage a crew can actually put in the ground decides whether the bid holds. Forty miles of interstate shoulder also means the traffic-control line is not a rounding error.

The schedule matches that scale. Estimated completion is January 11, 2030, better than three years from a fall 2026 award. A contractor bidding this is committing crews across three counties through four construction seasons.

Two gates narrow the field before price. Bidders have to be classified under N.J.S.A. 27:7-35.2, and only firms prequalified in work type 33 or work type 7 are eligible. There is no DBE goal on this project, which matters in both directions: a prime is not carrying a subcontracting target, and a DBE firm cannot count on one to get a seat.

The notice also names the compliance screens NJDOT applies before award. A firm on the state Department of Labor's Workplace Accountability in Labor List cannot contract with the department until it is removed. Bidders certify non-involvement in prohibited activities in Russia or Belarus under N.J.S.A. 52:32-60.1, certify non-debarment under 52:32-44.1, and must hold an active federal SAM registration before award. New Jersey's Prevailing Wage Act applies.

What to do next: the plans and full proposal package are not on NJDOT's own site — only this notice is. The documents are on Bid Express at www.bidx.com, so a firm chasing this needs an account there before October 15, not on the day. Confirm prequalification in work type 33 or 7 first; without it the rest is wasted estimating hours. And check bond capacity against the top of the range, not the bottom — $35 million is the number NJDOT put in writing.