According to my trusty road maps, I-95 appears to cross from Pennsylvania into New Jersey approximately at the northern end of Trenton. It then turns east, loops around Trenton and then. . .
It’s gone, only to pick up again a few miles east on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Am I missing something here? Is there a connector road that isn’t marked, or is there a different segment of I-95 for through traffic?
Or does New Jersey just like to mess with tourists’ heads?
I-95 enters a trans-dimensional spacewarp somewhere near Hopewell, NJ, and exits around Piscataway.
Some would have you believe that this gap in I-95’s spacetime continuum is due to a long-canceled interstate project called the Somerset Freeway. In fact, “Somerset” was the secret project code-name for a series of classified interdimensional energy-harvesting experiments supervised by Albert Einstein and John Wayne.
Rumor has it that if the magnetic field of the earth is aligned properly during an aurora borealis, you can keep going in a straight line at Hopewell and end up in Piscataway with no time having passed.
Or, to answer more plainly, you are correct: There is a gap in I-95 in New Jersey.
Ed
Having driven in NJ, I’d like to vote for this answer…
Aaaah, are you sure you aren’t looking at I-195 or 295? Both are parallels to I-95 which they cleverly renamed the “New Jersey Turnpike”. I drove it a few weeks ago, and IIRC, I-95 picks up it’s original alphanumeric name once again when you cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge near Penn’s Landing, NJ.
Tripler
I-95 runs through Baltimore and Wash, DC allaway down to Florida.
Nope. That’s the relatively infamous discontinuity in I-95 caused by the abandonment of the Somerset Throughway. Similar to the abandoned plans to run I-95 through Washington D.C., except that nobody bothered to re-designate a new road as I-95 for the interim. Here’s a lively discussion on misc.transport.roads about it.
Yes. New Jersey is home of the infamous US 1-9 (“U.S. Route 1 hyphen/and/or 9”) as well as jug-handles. Because NJ generally – but not strictly – forbids left turns, and also happens to have abysmally poor signage, you regularly end up not knowing which lane to be in as you prepare to make a left turn. Move left, and you’re guaranteed to find a jughandle; move right and find a green left arrow at the next intersection! :mad:
No vote needed. We do like to mess with tourists’ heads?
kunilou: If you are coming from the south, take either 295 to the NJ turnpike which become 95 or in Philly take the Walt Whitman bridge to either 295 or the Turnpike.
Jim
Wait, wait-there are other options. You can get off I-95 below Philly and take the Mid-County expressway, aka the Blue Route, aka I-476 up to and across the east-west turnpike, go north on the northeast extension to I-78, go east and hook up with I-95 just outside of Newark, NJ, or where I-95 becomes I-295 below Princeton, go north on route 1, and you’ll find I-95 again up near New Brunswick. Aren’t choices fun? 
Oh Man! I was gonna tell ya that we grag I-95 South all the way down till it ends near Miami and then jump on US 1 all the way to Key West, baby!
Damn, Nic. I didn’t know it went all the way to Omicron Persei 8. I should hop over to '95 and head North? I thought that’d just take me to Maine.
I like Jersey. They pump your gas for you.
Also, what happens to the nearby I-495, which enters Manhattan on the lincon tunnel, then ------------, then remerges in the Midtown tunnel to the Long Island Expressway. Perhaps there is a hidden exit inside both tunnels that lead to each other.
Really does 495 go through Manhattan?
You have to catch Exit 9-3/4 inside the tunnel. Takes you right out on the Midtown via Hogwarts…
kanicbird:
The 495 on the New Jersey side is not an Interstate, it’s a state route.
kunilou:
They allow people to cross into the state for free and charge them to leave…what do you think???
I can see it from my window, so I know it’s out there!
I tried to take it from Northern Virginia to Westchester County, but it got kind of muddled after Philly. I just assumed it was colinear with the NJ Turnpike, like it is with the Washington Beltway (495).
At one point there was the idea of a Midtown Expressway that would go from the Lincoln Tunnel to the Midtown Tunnel, connecting what is now NJ 495 (the Lincoln Tunnel Helix) to the Long Island Expressway (now I-495). Sometime around when Robert Moses was finally dislodged from power, everybody realized how really stupid the idea was and it was abandoned.
So, looking at a map of the area, I see that I-95 crosses into Jersey near Trenton, loops around to the northwest and ends at the junction with US 1 and I-295. I-295 then continues as a beltway around Trenton, interchanging with I-195 (which leads to the NJ Turnpike) and continuing south toward Delaware. Where 195 interchanges with the Turnpike, suddenly the Turnpike adds the designation of I-95.
Couldn’t they just close the hole the easy way here? Continue the designation of I-95 past the current interchange with 295, on through the interchange with 195 all the way to the Turnpike?
The current 295 / 195 interchange would be resigned as 95 / 295, and 195’s starting point would be pushed out to where the Turnpike currently intersects it. Can’t they just do it that way and solve the problem?
If you know where you’re going, you can get from 95 in PA to 95 in NY, but the point of the interstate system is ease of use. You’re supposed to be able to trust that you can get from the I-75 / I-95 junction in Ft Lauderdale to the I-75 / I-24 junction in Chattanooga without having to leave the interstates in question.
But Bambi, you’re talking NIMBY at it’s finest. Heck-it took almost a half-century to build I-476 because of that mindset.
Not to be a stickler about it, but I-75 and I-95 never intersect in Florida, though you can take I-595, which connects the two. And if you’re taking I-75 to Chattanooga from there, it’s actually quicker to take I-475 around Macon than it is to stay on I-75. Heck, at that, it would be easier (if not cheaper) to take the Florida Turnpike from Miami up to I-75 by Ocala.
You’re welcome.
Eh, trans-dimensional spacewarps are nothing new; we had one of those back in the '70’s here in California. I-5 had almost a 40 mile gap between Sacramento and Stockton. I remember my dad driving us out one day to see the end of the freeway.
But we’ve got something even better, now. CalTrans as managed to twist the space-time continuum to such an extent that one can now travel in three directions at once. There is about a 3 mile section of road (the Eastshore Freeway) where, if you drive from Emeryville to Berkeley, you are *simultaneously *traveling on I-80 East and I-580 West.
And according to the compass, you are traveling almost due North.
There’s a stretch near Wytheville, VA, which is simultaneously I-81 north and I-77 south, or of course vice versa if going the other way. In point of fact, it runs east-northeast/west-southwest.
With all due respect to the helpful New Jersey members, though, the whole frigging point to Interstate system signage is to be able to get you through an area on a single signed highway, or at most one switchover from route #1 to route #2. New Jersey should sign the length of road that connects the two parts of I-95 as being I-95, or at least use “To I-95” signs. Someone should make clear to the NJ DOT that they get Federal money in part because people travel through the Garden State en route elsewhere, and if they’re not interested in making it possible for drivers to do so safely and efficiently at minimal cost to them, they should forfeit that money and run on state taxes only.