On Driving in NJ

Travelling often now from South Jersey to North Jersey, and having lived in different parts of New Jersey since college (going to 10 years, yikes), I wanted to share some thoughts about driving in our great state...

On the Turnpike...

Read up on "the Turnpike". The Turnpike has become increasingly annoying to travel as the years have gone on. It seems like traffic used to be concentrated near exit 18 and near Newark sometimes, and then bunch up at the "merge" going south. However, often these days these are not the worst pockets of traffic. Traffic is worst often going north or south in random pockets anywhere between exit 6 and exit 9. If you clicked on the Wikipedia link, apparently they are thinking of widening the turnpike between exit 6 and exit 8A, so who knows if that will help.

The dashes painted on the road on the turnpike are 25 feet long. I learned this in a math teacher's workshop.

I've stopped in Turnpike rest stops and never been propositioned by a woman, man, or a prostitute. What have I been missing out on?

They need to do something coming north approaching the toll booth at exit 18 about people who wait in the EZ-Pass lane but don't have EZ-Pass, and then wait to cut into the non-EZ-Pass lanes to avoid waiting there. It not only pisses off both EZ-Passers and non-EZ-Passers, but it defeats the purpose of having an EZ-Pass lane. They should either (1) start putting up concrete dividers about half a mile up the Turnpike - although, I guess you'd run into the same problem right before these dividers - or, (2) have police patrol the plaza and give out fines or tickets for these line cutters.

Speaking of the toll booth at exit 18, any thought on this huge ski thing they're constructing there? What's the progress with that?

There are no roads that traverse the entire length of the Turnpike that give you alternate methods to travel. There are several different roads which run almost parallel to the turnpike for strecthes at a time. For instance, one can bypass the turnpike between exit 4 and exit 7 by taking 295 which is an awesome highway, and then if turnpike traffic is really bad one can take the Parkway to bypass the stretch from exit 11 to exit 18. Between exit 7 and exit 11 one can take either Route 1 and Route 130. However, except for 295 none of these other methods are usually quicker than waiting out the traffic.

Which leads me to...

On Traffic...

Has traffic in the NYC / NJ / Philadelphia / CT region reached a point of "crisis"? Obviously not. We all manage to get by and deal with the traffic we have. However, we're not even close to being the worst. According to this link, here's the top 12 worst cities:

1. Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Calif.
2. San Francisco, Oakland, Calif.
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Atlanta
5. Houston
6. Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Tex.
7. Chicago.
8. Detroit
9. Riverside, San Bernardino, Calif.
9. Orlando, Fla.
11. San Jose, Calif.
12. San Diego

I was in L.A. once in my life, and the traffic indeed did suck at all hours.

Anyway, I know that as a Jersey resident, I often feel like have to plan my activities around traffic. It's sometimes worth driving back and forth to North Jersey at weird hours to avoid the extra 30 - 60 minutes I'll have to sit annoyed on the Turnpike (with no traffic, it's about an hour and 40 minutes). And I don't really do errands after school between, say, 4:30 and 6:30. And if I do, I take back roads everywhere.

So, I guess what I'm pondering is, when would traffic reach such a level not only here in NJ, but in general, that a critical mass of our society stood up and decided that serious changes needed to be made (add true incentives to use public transportation, etc...)?

"Cars"

An animated movie called Cars came out a couple of years ago (it was good, worth seeing). Anyway, a theme of the movie is about how major highways / modern conveniences make people forget about small towns / old fashioned America and what's really important. Now that I've traversed South Jersey a little bit, that movie rings true driving these other smaller roads (sometimes to avoid traffic on the Atlantic City Expressway!) that run east-west from Philadelphia to Atlantic City. People have been driving to the shore for a long time from the Philadelphia area, but there is a major road called the Atlantic City Expressway (built in the 60s) that has slowly decreased traffic on these other roads. There are small, run down bars, restaurants, and generally abandonded areas on these smaller roads that families must have taken before everybody just decided to take the Expressway since there are no lights and you can do 65 (at least) instead of having to stop every couple of miles for a light and do 65 (at the most) on these other highways.