Pulaski Skyway

 
The Skyway is a 3.5 mile bridge from Jersey City to Newark spanning the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers and the town of Kearny. It opened in 1932.  Built to funnel traffic to and from the then-new Holland Tunnel at 60 mph, it carried an estimated 49,000 vehicles the day it opened. That day police ticketed a driver from New York for doing 80 mph.

At its dedication in 1933, the Skyway was described as a "majestic, high-speed, elevated viaduct, a marvel in engineering achievement." The Museum of Modern Art praised the Skyway in a book on bridges at the time, and the Association of Engineers named it the "Most Beautiful Bridge in the World."

Despite architectural awards and rapturous descriptions, this was a early effort at building a high-speed roadway. Mistakes were made. There were no shoulders, no place to pull off a stalled vehicle, no place for a cop to pull over a speeder. Worse, two mid-way entrance ramps -- one in Kearny and one in Jersey City -- entered the roadway from the left. Slow-moving cars coming up the long ramp fed into fast, passing-lane traffic. There was no acceleration lane for merging.

The result was mayhem. Entire families died on what Jersey City cops and the locals long referred to simply as "up there." Soon trucks, which caused the most carnage,  were banned. Of the original five lanes - the center lane intended to change direction for rush hours - was left unused as a buffer. New Jersey barriers to physically separate traffic were added much later. The two mid-way entrance ramps that launched into left traffic lanes were finally closed only within
the last decade.

The picture below is is from a crusty,50-year-old negative that was poorly developed and stored. Sorry about that. I took it from the shoulder of the northbound New Jersey Turnpike, Eastern Spur immediately north of Exit 15. Today the view includes high billboards and the top of a tall tree that rises from beside the Essex Generating station below.
 

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