Why is I-95 discontinuous in NJ?

Factual Questions
1

Most brave Southern souls that dare the frenetic traffic of the Northern states take I-95 north to the NJ area, then hop on the NJ Turnpike, and on to NY and above. The same probably applies to Northerners fleeing south.

There’s a gap in NJ for I-95. Why didn’t the planners just include the Turnpike as part of I-95? There are numerous instances where major highways have multiple names. (One interesting one is the confluence of I-77 and I-81, where for a few miles you’re on I-77 going north and I-81 going south.)

2

Gee, my maps show the NJ Turnpike as part of I-95. But maybe that just the maps – because I don’t recall how the road is marked in real life.

If you’re right, and the Turnpike is not part of I-95, here’s my educated guess why: I’m pretty sure that interstates are prohibited from being toll roads, which the Turnpike is. So maybe they could not officially designate it as part of an interstate highway.

3

interesting. The portion of Route 95 that skirts around the western side of the Boston area is also called Route 128. I call it a parking lot.

4

The northern part of the Turnpike is 95, but not the southern part. There’s a website somewhere called “The I-95 Interstate Consortium” or something like that which gives the exact milepost.

Another pet peeve I have on this subject is that the exits north of 18, i.e., Teaneck and Fort Lee, are numbered 68 and 70, as if they were part of Route 80. But they’re not. The signs make it very clear that the stretch of road from the 80/95 merge until the GW Bridge is 95, and not 80. So why not call them exits 19 and 20?

5

In New Jersey the Turnpike is I-95. There are signs on it saying I-95

6

It may be because parts of the Turnpike don’t conform to Interestate Highway standards. We have that problem here in St. Louis, where the same highway keeps changing between U.S. 40 and Interstate 64. It won’t all be Interstate until the next phase of construction/upgrades (including exits and access) are complete.

The Chicago Skyway, Indiana and Ohio Turnpikes are all Interstate highways and toll roads.

7

I-95 goes through Delaware and up the edge of Pennsylvania (not into NJ first). In the north it crosses into NJ around Trenton, does some wiggling around with I-195 and then meets the Turnpike. That’s why the northern section is I-95. It’s not “missing” it just in another state for a while.

8

Oh, it’s missing, all right. One time, to avoid the turnpike tolls, I decided to head up I-95 instead through Jersey. Ended up on U.S. 1 for an excrutiatingly long 40 miles.

Sua

9

If you look at a more detailed map, you will see that I-95 does a U-Turn and turns into 295 south. The Turnpike is marked as I-95 along at least part of it’s length. The turnpike and 295 do not intersect, but do run parallel for quite a bit, some of which is only a few hundred feet apart.

This is an anomaly of the Jersey Zone. Another weird NJ roadway anomaly is where RT 440 south turns into RT 287 North. The odd bit is that there is no turn in the road, and that 287 actually is going west at that point. If you keep following 287 it turns north and then east, and then re-enters New York state.

10

I recall, from living in central NJ in the early '80’s,that there was a stretch of highway planned that would have closed the gap. Heading north from Philly, crossing the Delaware River, there would have been a leg connecting what’s now I-295 to what’s now I-287 near Somerset, passing through Hopewell on the way (roughly along the route of Route 206). The southern leg of I-287 would have had the added designation of I-95 until its connection with the NJTP somewhere around New Brunswick.

This road would have required taking a lot of expensive land from a lot of people wealthy enough to have some influence in the Halls of Power, and finally it was cancelled in favor of simply designating the NJTP as I-95. Of course, there’s still a growing amount of traffic on the planned corridor, except it still goes through the streets of Princeton. I hope they’re happy they “won.”

11

This is the story, as I heard it (and this is one of those third-hand things, so take it with the appropriate grain of salt, if necessary).

The first major limited access highways in the country were the turnpikes (NJ Turnpike, NY Thruway, PA Turnpike, etc.), which were toll-supported roads. In the fifties, the Interstate highway system was introduced. Under the interstate highway system, the federal government would pay 95% of the road construction costs, but the newly-constructed roads could not be toll roads (except for bridges and tunnels, I think).

When the interstate highways were laid out, they followed the existing turnpikes in some parts, but didn’t in others. For instance, the Pennsylvania Turnpike was designated I-76 for most of its length, but around Valley Forge, the I-76 designation went onto to the Schuylkill Expressway into Philadelphia, while the remainder of the Pennsylvaina Turnpike from east of Valley Forge to the NJ border was designated I-376. (I may have a vauge recollection that they switched this around sometime after I lived in Philly in the late '80s.)

Well, they had planned to do something similar for the New Jersey Turnpike with I-95. From Maryland and Delaware, I-95 runs west of the Delaware River, through Philadelphia and up to around Bristol, PA. There is a spur off of I-95 in Delaware which leads to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. When you cross the Delaware Bridge into New Jersey, you can either take the NJ Turnpike, which leads toward New York City, or I-295 which runs on the west side of the Delaware River to about Trenton.

Well, under the original Interstate Highway plan, I-95 would connect from where it now ends to the NJ Turnpike at Exit 10 (I-287, Metuchen, Perth Amboy), and the NJ Turnpike north of Exit would be continue as I-95. North of Exit 10, the Turnpike is currently designated as I-95, but it is not designated as such below Exit 10. On some maps (at least some older maps that I remember) there is a dashed line running across central New Jersey marked something like “I-95 proposed.”

Well, the Interstate system planners chose that route for I-95, but New Jersey did not agree. It had the Turnpike, and to create a free highway from Philadelphia to just south of New York would cut out the toll revenues that the Turnpike was generating from travellers from Philadelphia, Trenton and points south. So, New Jersey never put up the 5% of the cost of building the proposed I-95 from Pennsylvania to Exit 10, and it never got built.

12

Hey, Billdo! Good to see you again, man! Where have you been keeping yourself?

13

He’s probably been driving behind SuaSponte up U.S. 1.