Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Three Bridges is a village in Readington, New Jersey on the South Branch Raritan River, named for the three original bridges there which crossed the river. Farmers, John Vlerebone and Harriet Foster Cline were original land owners in the area of Three Bridges. They eventually sold some of their land to the Central Railroad of New Jersey for its South Branch Line. Vlerebone and Kline subdivided their land along Old York Road after 1864, which allowed a village to build up along the road. In 1885, the Lehigh Valley Railroad also built a line through Three Bridges. Numerous lines for shipping produce and a number of daily passenger lines stopped in the village in its heyday. Today, with the loss of the passenger lines, a large number of commercial businesses are gone, but there are still a number of restaurants and a branch of the Hunterdon County Library System.