I meant to write on Sunday night, but I'd gone to a lecture on the Pulaski Skyway in Hoboken during the day, and that inspired me to cut together this instead.
I'd gone to IKEA early on a Sunday morning a few years ago, and on the way back, stuck my camera up on my car's dashboard for the three-mile run over the Pulaski Skyway.
The Skyway is the last remaining section of the United States first superhighway project ("Route 1 Extension"), which went high above the Meadowlands and Jersey City, connecting the Holland Tunnel to the wider world beyond the Newport Mall. Which, now that I think about it, wasn't built in 1932.
In the video, you'll notice there are no shoulders and there is only a small barrier between the lanes. The engineers based this truss bridge on railroad designs, so there were originally two lanes in either direction with a shared breakdown lane in the center. Drivers decided they preferred this to be an overtaking lane, so the shared lane didn't last long.
The Skyway is black, because that's what they did in 1932, paint railroad truss bridges black.
The exits and entrances along the way have almost no merge space. This isn't the only highway I've been on with stop signs at the entrance ramps, but it's probably the scariest. There's a roller coaster effect when you zip down an exit ramp.
Rumor is you can speed along the Pulaski Skyway, because there is nowhere for the police to pull you over.
The Skyway is badly in need of repair. At the end of the video, you'll see that I leave the Skyway and enter a cut in the bedrock--I think this has an origin in a railroad right-of-way. I'm having a hard time identifying it since it runs parallel to the better-known, abandoned Erie Cut.
I'd gone to IKEA early on a Sunday morning a few years ago, and on the way back, stuck my camera up on my car's dashboard for the three-mile run over the Pulaski Skyway.
The Skyway is the last remaining section of the United States first superhighway project ("Route 1 Extension"), which went high above the Meadowlands and Jersey City, connecting the Holland Tunnel to the wider world beyond the Newport Mall. Which, now that I think about it, wasn't built in 1932.
In the video, you'll notice there are no shoulders and there is only a small barrier between the lanes. The engineers based this truss bridge on railroad designs, so there were originally two lanes in either direction with a shared breakdown lane in the center. Drivers decided they preferred this to be an overtaking lane, so the shared lane didn't last long.
The Skyway is black, because that's what they did in 1932, paint railroad truss bridges black.
The exits and entrances along the way have almost no merge space. This isn't the only highway I've been on with stop signs at the entrance ramps, but it's probably the scariest. There's a roller coaster effect when you zip down an exit ramp.
Rumor is you can speed along the Pulaski Skyway, because there is nowhere for the police to pull you over.
The Skyway is badly in need of repair. At the end of the video, you'll see that I leave the Skyway and enter a cut in the bedrock--I think this has an origin in a railroad right-of-way. I'm having a hard time identifying it since it runs parallel to the better-known, abandoned Erie Cut.
1 comment:
"I think this has an origin in a railroad right-of-way. I'm having a hard time identifying it since it runs parallel to the better-known, abandoned Erie Cut."
As far as I know, the "covered roadway"/NJ-139 east of the Skyway was never a rail right-of-way. It does run parallel to the Erie Railroad's Bergen Arches cut (abandoned) and older Long Dock Tunnel (still in use by freight), but this map from 1919 shows buildings standing on the land just north of those rail lines, where the covered roadway cut and Hoboken Ave are today.
The covered roadway is actually older than the Skyway viaduct itself, having originally opened in 1928.
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