A Philly.com story looks at the economic recovery happening in Florence, NJ, and draws a simple conclusion – infrastructure has fueled the boom.

“Creation of the River Line light-rail route between Camden and Trenton in 2008, with station stops in both the southern Florence and its northern, unincorporated Roebling section, has helped to make the town attractive to employers needing high numbers of workers, according to Remsa.
 
But the centerpiece of its connectivity has been Route 1-276: a four-lane highway slicing through town that links the New Jersey Turnpike to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and links Florence to both.
 
‘There are more and larger distribution centers around Exit 8A in Middlesex County,’ near Cranbury, Remsa said. ‘But that area is just about built out. So the private sector has been asking itself, ‘What’s the next 8A?’ And that happens to be Exit 6A,’ in Florence.
 
Mark Goldstein, a vice president at Liberty Property Trust L.L.C., builder of the Amazon site, agreed.
 
‘It’s the exit where the Pennsylvania Turnpike and New Jersey Turnpike come together, so that’s certainly a benefit,’ he said.
 
‘And now that the [New Jersey] Turnpike has been widened, the bottleneck south of 8A no longer exists,’ said Goldstein, head of Jersey operations for the Malvern-based firm. The bottleneck ‘historically had limited some companies from going to 6A,’ he said.”

David O’Reilly, Philly.com

It’s a story as old as the hills – transportation (of goods, of materials, and of people) is the foundation of the economy. The Romans knew it. The British and Germans knew it. And Americans knew it too; that’s why we built the Transcontinental Railroad, the Panama Canal, and the Interstate Highway System. But we’ve somehow forgotten this in the past 25 years as we’ve allowed the nation’s and the state’s infrastructure to erode faster than we can maintain it. That’s not to say that nothing is being done, and every time we choose to invest in infrastructure we see the benefits. Like in Florence NJ.
Read more about this infrastructure success story here: http://articles.philly.com/2016-05-31/news/73449717_1_distribution-center-florence-township-subaru