The primary New Jersey state highway system consists of roughly 2800 miles of designated touring routes, including some highways under control of a tolling agency or a bridge commission, as well as some highways that are maintained by counties or municipalities.
New Jersey state highways do not follow the rule of cardinal direction, under which even-numbered routes run east-west and odd-numbered routes run north-south. However, two-digit Interstate and U.S. highways follow the rule. Three-digit Interstate and U.S. highways are loop or spur routes and so these do not necessarily follow the rule.
In addition, New Jersey has nearly 2000 miles of secondary highways maintained by counties but receiving priority for transportation funding. These are designated with county highway shields and numbers in the 500s. These typically follow the rule of cardinal direction, though there are a few exceptions (for instance, SR 537 runs mainly east-west between Camden and Long Branch).
Prior to a major highway renumbering in 1953, there were a number of S routes, with S meaning “spur”. Examples include NJ S-3 (now part of NJ 3), NJ S-4B (now NJ 208), and NJ S-41 (now NJ 73). Roads with the SPUR banner still exist in the 500-series system, as do roads with an ALT banner. Some counties also designate truck routes for the 500 series, but these are over other county roads and (for the most part) are not an official part of the 500 series. There are only a few bannered routes left in New Jersey: US 1 TRUCK from Newark to Jersey City, US 1 BUSINESS in Lawrence, and NJ 33 BUSINESS in Freehold. These are included on the pages for their parent routes.
Inventories are usually from south to north or west to east; exceptions are noted.
The source for most of these route logs is the NJ Department of Transportation’s Straight Line Diagrams. These are supplemented by auxiliary maps and personal observations.
For the sake of manageability, I have listed on each route log only the following features:
Each page is in apparent reverse order of inventory, with the highest mile markers at the top of the page. This is so that features in the route logs appear in the order one might see them if looking at a map or from the sky.
While I have included some of the history of each road on these pages, a more comprehensive source is the New Jersey route log created by Al Yurisko, updated by Dan Moraseski, and currently maintained by Steve Alpert.
New Jersey Turnpike (mainline, exit 1 in Pennsville to exit 6 in Mansfield)
New Jersey Turnpike (mainline, exit 6 in Mansfield to exit 72 in Fort Lee)New Jersey Turnpike (Pennsylvania Turnpike extension west of exit 6)New Jersey Turnpike (western alignment between Newark and Ridgefield)
New Jersey Turnpike (Newark Bay extension east of exit 14)
Garden State Parkway
Palisades Interstate Parkway
Atlantic City Expressway (and Brigantine Extension)
