The East Windsor Township Council has assigned a contract for work to plan the extension of Lanning Boulevard. The goal of the project is to improve traffic flow on Route 571 and the two shopping centers near the road, which is home to the Municipal Building.

The council voted 6-0 Tuesday, with Marsha Weinstein absent, to assign the $115,000 contract to the Morristown-based Louis Berger Group. Mayor Janice Mironov said the township will pay for the planning out of funds provided by developers, not taxpayer dollars. The need for the project was revealed by a grant-funded traffic study.

“We’re only authorizing the expenditure of $25,000, and then it has to come back to the governing body,” the mayor added after the meting.

If the project goes past the planning stages, it would let drivers get to the stores in the Windsor-Heights Shopping Center, which includes Super Fresh, and on Route 130 without having to get back onto Princeton-Hightstown Road.

Lanning Boulevard runs northeast off of Princeton-Hightstown Road (Route 571), dead-ending in the north at the township Senior Center. But the new project, if completed, would take it further.

Under option 1, the boulevard would link south over Princeton-Hightstown Road to the Windsor-Heights Shopping Center through an existing bypass lane at the Wachovia Bank.

The second option includes the link to the shopping center, but would also extend Lanning Boulevard along the south border of the shopping center to join it with the existing access to Route 130.

“This is a project that council has discussed previously that is part of our proactive approach to providing safe interconnections for vehicles in this town among public facilities and shopping,” Mayor Mironov said.