The New Jersey Turnpike: The Road You Love to Hate

The New Jersey Turnpike opened in nineteen fifty-one and is among the busiest toll roads in the United States, handling in some sections over a hundred and fifty thousand vehicles per day. It is not a road that invites affection. The stretch through the industrial corridor along Newark Bay, the stretch that gives the Turnpike its reputation, is genuine: oil refineries, chemical plants, container terminals, power lines, and the swamp that Jersey stands on, all of it visible from the elevated roadway in a panorama that has been described as dystopian by every writer who has passed through, including the ones who love it.

The Meadowlands, the wetland system through which the Turnpike runs in its northern section, were once tidal marshes occupied by the Lenape. They were partially drained and industrialized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. MetLife Stadium, which holds the New York Giants and the New York Jets despite being in New Jersey, sits in the Meadowlands.

The petrochemical smell that arrives around Exit Thirteen is not a malfunction. It is the industrial complex that made this region economically central to the Northeast corridor for a century. The Turnpike's interchange numbering system runs from south to north, which means that in the northern, more urbanized sections, you are in the teens.

Exit Thirteen is the turnoff for Staten Island via the Goethals Bridge, and Exit Eighteen East leads toward the Lincoln Tunnel and New York City. The toll plazas that used to slow traffic are mostly gone, replaced by electronic collection that reads transponders and license plates at full speed. The Turnpike is faster than it looks and slower than you want it to be.