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After 60 Years, 1,900-Mile-Long Interstate 95 Is Almost Finished (bloomberg.com)
"It has taken 60 years, but a small, strange gap in Interstate-95 is being filled," writes Slashdot reader McGruber. Bloomberg reports: Near the Pennsylvania border, drivers have long been forced off the interstate and onto other roadways, only to join back 8 miles away. Transportation officials and civil engineers spent more than two decades and $425 million to eliminate this detour off I-95, the most traveled highway in America, spanning 1,900 miles from Miami to Maine.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, which oversees the I-95 Interchange Project, said the new infrastructure -- which includes the creation of flyover ramps, toll plaza facilities, environmental mitigation sites, intersections, six overhead bridges, widened highways and new connections to the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes -- will be open to the public by Sept. 24. "The benefit of completing this 'missing link' is mobility," said Carl DeFebo, the director of public relations at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. The new infrastructure will reduce traffic time for north- and south-bound travelers and ease congestion on local roads that used to connect I-95 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, which oversees the I-95 Interchange Project, said the new infrastructure -- which includes the creation of flyover ramps, toll plaza facilities, environmental mitigation sites, intersections, six overhead bridges, widened highways and new connections to the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes -- will be open to the public by Sept. 24. "The benefit of completing this 'missing link' is mobility," said Carl DeFebo, the director of public relations at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. The new infrastructure will reduce traffic time for north- and south-bound travelers and ease congestion on local roads that used to connect I-95 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
..always in a constant state of construction. Been here almost 20 years, and it's still all fucked up in places from Miami to at least West Palm Beach. I avoid it as much as I can.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
You might have gone up the NJ Turnpike instead. That's the better route. It's is labeled 95 in its northern parts, but down near Philly, The NJT is in NJ and 95 is on the PA side along the east side of Philly.
That's probably because you assumed that I-95 followed the entire length of the NJ Turnpike - which pretty much everyone has assumed all along. But no, I-95 runs down the Turnpike from NYC and then mysteriously stops being signed as such around Exit 9, even though there was no applicable interchange involved. Then the NJ Turnpike ends at the bridge into Delaware, where it meets up with the stub of I-95 that goes through Philadelphia and also mysteriously starts being signed as I-295 after crossing into NJ. Anyone going from NYC to DC would be going out of their way to turn off onto this new alignment (using the existing PA Turnpike and using a new interchange to connect to the stub) and add another city (Philadelphia) to drive through. PA is not even a coastal state, so there's no logical reason for I-95 to run through it in the first place - other than politics.
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Interstate 95 was always intended to be built along the right-of-way of US 1 in New Jersey between Princeton and New Brunswick. Driving in the area you can see where property along US 1 was condemned and cleared in anticipation of I-95, but the highway construction never happened due to local opposition.
This "re-routing" is a bit more than re-signing a 20-mile-longer route over existing interstates that we were already using over the past 30 years to bypass that missing segment. We would take I-295 from the Delaware Memorial Bridge, take I-195 eastbound, and then join the New Jersey Turnpike northbound where it formally takes on the I-95 designation. It was not labelled I-95 south of I-195.
Along with the re-labeling of these roads there are a lot of new roadway, bridges, and interchanges as well to optimize the dangerous merges. I-295 will revert to become a kinda-Philadelphia-bypass (a.k.a., "half-assed Beltway and southern bypass") as originally intended. The "new" I-95 will ultimately become this haphazard zig-zag highway that nobody wanted with an extra twenty miles more than the originally-proposed route through Princeton. But, at least they can say "I-95 is finally completed."
Meanwhile, the New Jersey Turnpike express lanes, a.k.a., "dual-dual" configuration, have been extended far south of the Exit 7A I-195 interchange.
Kriston
It was originally planned to, of course. I-395 was originally I-95, but they only got it as far as US Route 50 before local politics brought it to a screeching halt and faced with the fact that the rest of it would never be built, they had to designate part of the Beltway (I-495) as I-95, and the designation I-395 was created for the unfinished road through DC. I remember how there used to be signs on I-395 that said "old I-95" (I don't remember the I-95 signs for it--the designation was changed in the late 1970s and I'm not quite old enough to have been driving it back then.)
Rerouting I-95 to the Beltway means it has to cross the Potomac via Wilson Bridge. Isn't having a major Interstate artery cross a drawbridge fun? At least they rebuilt it higher so it doesn't have to open as often--it used to open almost daily.