New Jersey Route 208

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Route 208 is a state highway in New Jersey, United States. It is an almost freeway in the northern part of the state. Its termini are at an intersection with Interstate 287 in Oakland, New Jersey and an intersection with Route 4 in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. At one point, it was planned to connect with New York State Route 208, hence the number.

[edit] Route description

While NJ 208 is described as an almost freeway, at no point does it meet the standard of controlled access. Several streets and private driveways abut the road throughout its length. However, no traffic may cross the highway at grade. The one traffic signal on the road was removed in the 1990s and a barrier was put in place. Traffic moves in two lanes in each direction for the road's entire length of 10.07 miles (16.21 km), widening briefly to three lanes near its northern terminus. The speed limit for its entire length is 55 mph (88 km/h).

The road originates at NJ 4 in Fair Lawn, at an interchange that also includes ramps for Saddle River Road. Shortly, on the left a short street named Virginia Drive intersects the southbound lanes.

Morlot Avenue in Fair Lawn is the first junction, followed by Plaza Road and Berdan Avenue in the vicinity of the Bergen County Line of New Jersey Transit. The highway's only gas station is in the southbound lanes at this point. Fair Lawn Avenue, one of the oldest overpasses on the road, is next. This is followed by McBride Avenue, which was a signalized intersection at the base of the hill and the site of numerous crashes until the state removed the signal and installed a barrier. At this point, the highway passes an industrial park, including a landmark Nabisco plant on the right side.

Maple Avenue, County Road 507, is next. Soon, the road enters Glen Rock and crosses the New Jersey Transit Main Line before continuing to Lincoln Avenue and a crossing into Hawthorne, Passaic County.

The highway has turnoffs in each direction for Utter Avenue in Hawthorne and passes beneath the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway track prior to its interchange with Goffle Road. Past here, the highway climbs a hill, passing the Hawthorne Gospel Church on the right, and then re-enters Bergen County just before Grandview Avenue in Wyckoff.

For its remaining five miles, the highway largely resembles a parkway, although there are a few driveways off the road. Interchanges include Cedar Hill Avenue and Russell Avenue in Wyckoff, and Ewing Avenue (County Road 502) and Summit Avenue in Franklin Lakes. An entrance and exit for the Becton Dickinson headquarters campus follows, as the road widens to three lanes in each direction approaching an interchange with Colonial Road and High Mountain Road.

The final exit heading northbound is for Interstate 287 North, an interchange which includes another crossing of the Susquehanna track, near the site of the railroad's former Crystal Lake station. Ironically, NJ 208 North merges at its terminus into I-287 South, a phenomenon that has confused numerous motorists since I-287 was completed in 1993.

[edit] History

NJ 208 was first plotted in the late 1940s as Route S4B, the second of four spurs off Route 4 in its long and never-completed journey from Cape May to Fort Lee and the George Washington Bridge. The original concept was to allow traffic leaving the bridge to head northward to Oakland, Ringwood, and eventually Sterling Forest and Monroe, New York, where it would join New York's Route 208 at its intersection with New York State Route 17. For this reason, the road received the number 208 in the New Jersey Department of Transportation 1953 renumbering.

Construction began in 1949, and part of the road was open in Fair Lawn in the early 1950s. By 1960, the road was extended to a northern terminus at West Oakland Avenue in Oakland, where traffic could exit and continue over Skyline Drive to Ringwood. Concerns for the environment of the Ramapo Mountains and Sterling Forest caused the road's extension to be scuttled. Today, the road ends at Interstate 287, but that freeway uses about a mile of the old NJ 208 right-of-way in Oakland, and the old terminus ramp at West Oakland Avenue survives as I-287 northbound interchange 58.