In the 1950s, builders of the interstate highway system in southern New Jersey constructed an interchange to channel traffic from north-south I-295 primarily onto east-west I-76 and State Route 42, assuming that motorists were headed only to Philadelphia and Atlantic City, N.J. But a funny thing happened on the way to the present. Throngs of local and out-of-state travelers through the Northeast’s dense New Jersey corridor discovered I-295 as a cheaper, and often less traffic-clogged, alternative than the New Jersey Turnpike, which it parallels.
As a result, the connection has become a circuitous bottleneck for traffic—which some estimates peg at more than 250,000 vehicles per day—as well as a safety hazard. Media reports say the maze of on-off ramps requiring quick speed changes has generated one of the state’s highest crash rates.