At the same time, work was suspended in April for rising costs of the new bypass. Instead of costing $68 million (2008 USD), the cost of the new bypass had inflated to $200 million and the future of the project came into question. This upset local residents, who sold their land for the construction of the bypass, which was partially constructed for PA 402. Locals, some of whom who had been in the area for decades, started comparing the bypass shutdown as another version of the Tocks Island Dam project from 1956–1992, which led to numerous demonstrations to protect the Delaware River. At this point, PennDOT had to scale down the project and had no intent of the new PA 402 alignment to an interchange being finished, after grading and paving for the new alignment had already been started on the new alignment.