Maplewood saved from Route 78.

Interesting ... I remember the discussions about the "land bridges" in the Watchung Reservation section and also remember when it all finally opened up. I also remember that long period of time when Route 24 ended at the Short Hills mall and bikers and skaters had a wonderful "track" on the piece to the west that was held up for many years by environmental concerns related to the wetlands near the Morristown airport. My spouse used to bike over there a lot.

Great info. Thanks. Now, about the Panama Canal and truck traffic....

280 cut through Llewellyn Park with many homes demolished. The back gate house is across from Essex Green mall.

MadHatterer said:

Ok explain how Route 78 was rerouted around Maplewood. What was the original route?

78 was supposed to go right through my grandparents' property. It's not your business where that was, but it was in Maplewood.

I suppose if you want to investigate my posting history on MOL (which dates back to the late 90's you could find out exactly where.

Poor Newark

My street and the street my grandparents lived on were both cut in half by the highway.

Although I think that i78 through Maplewood would be atrocious, I believe the town would benefit enormously if we had chain stores and large corporations to lift the tax burden. I wouldn't mind if springfield avenue looked a little more like route 22.

@fabulouswalls-- not that you expected an answer but--the underlying reason for all the truck traffic on 78 is that all freight traveling by rail can only access the NYC market by going from PA north to Selkirk, NY( near Albany) then back down to the NY metro area. So instead, most freight enters the NY market by truck.

There was a proposal a while ago to build the Cross Harbor freight tunnel that would allow freight traffic to travel directly into NY, but the project lacked bi-state support

@jzgirl - I was referring to this.

JDBitterman said:

First----this lovely but mostly unrelated gem.....who knew the Panama Canal will soon impact traffic here?

I-78 is a major road linking ports in the New York City and New Jersey area to points west, and sees over 4 million trucks annually, with trucks representing 24% of all traffic. Truck traffic on the road is projected to rise once the widening of the Panama Canal is completed in 2015, when more Asian ships are expected to use East Coast ports. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_78

SocialismStinks said:

Although I think that i78 through Maplewood would be atrocious, I believe the town would benefit enormously if we had chain stores and large corporations to lift the tax burden. I wouldn't mind if springfield avenue looked a little more like route 22.

I-78 doesn't really have chain stores right along it for the most part because of the limited access. Route 22 is another story.

Route 22 is INSANE

SocialismStinks said:

Although I think that i78 through Maplewood would be atrocious, I believe the town would benefit enormously if we had chain stores and large corporations to lift the tax burden. I wouldn't mind if springfield avenue looked a little more like route 22.

As someone who lives in a house with a view of Springfield Ave, I'll vote "noooooo thank you" to it looking more like Rt 22.

I think Springfield will continue to improve and become more of a destination. I'm liking where it's headed and with the new WaWa, Diner, restaurants and indie movie theater, it's going to be fun

RippleK said:

I think Springfield will continue to improve and become more of a destination. I'm liking where it's headed and with the new WaWa, Diner, restaurants and indie movie theater, it's going to be fun

I've only heard of the WaWa. Are we getting those other things?

Indie movie theater????

kthnry said:

Indie movie theater????

I suspect RippleK might be hallucinating.

Or time traveling back to when The Lost Picture Show was still there.

There used to be an indie movie theater on Springfield Avenue down in Vauxhall - I think where the Home Depot garden center is now ... or is there still a mini-storage place next to that? (I know the mini-storage place went in there after the theater closed.)

ETA - It was the Lost Picture Show as spontaneous mentions.

It was where the storage facility is now. Home Depot was the Union Market. Bank of America is roughly near where the car wash was.

Having driven occassionally when I lived in NYC, and of course driving all the time now that I live in the burbs, my view is that we definitely need some highways, but not as many as we do. In NYC, the BQE is terrible. In theory, a limited access road allowing you to bypass the local roads on an inter-borough trip sounds great; in practice, I'm not sure driving it actually ever saved me more than maybe 15 minutes. 15 minutes sounds like a pretty small gain for what was destroyed to create it.

The ring highways (FDR, Major Deegan) feel necessary, but the borough-slicing ones (BQE, Cross-Bronx) feel like a lot of destruction for very little return. In a crowded urban landscape, I suspect diverting freight to alternate routes (like the proposed Cross Harbor freight tunnel referenced by @jzgirl) and keeping limited access passenger roads to the periphery would have been a better return on investment.

Out here, I've found I have almost zero use for 280, and I live in WO, so it should be theoretically my most convenient route to the city. I almost always go up to 80 or down to 78 instead, which adds about 20 minutes. Given that those twenty minutes were purchased at the expense of Orange, East Orange, and Newark, that doesn't feel like a great deal.

I find 78 useful, but I'm very happy it did not end up slicing through Maplewood!

spontaneous said:

It was where the storage facility is now. Home Depot was the Union Market. Bank of America is roughly near where the car wash was.

Thought the car wash was on the other side of home depot closer to 24 (kind of where the expo/ contractor pickup part of home depot is now). The area by BoA was part of the driving range/
Batting cages / mini golf place.

78 goes right through my town. In fact my street borders It. I has zero effect on my quality of life. I don't even hear traffic no less see it. Honestly.

Behind the driving range, down a long driveway was Brookside Swim Club.I grew up on Liberty Ave . The driveway went from Liberty Ave by the Liberty Tavern to Springfield Ave alongside of driving range. BTW we always called Springfield Ave, 7 Bridges Road. Dairy Queen where Mannys is.Before Union Marketplace was Great Eastern Mills.. Before that it was known as the "waterworks".I remember one summer mid 60's the US Army came in for 2 weeks of exercises with tanks,trucks, and lots of soldiers. They built bridges over our creeks and tree houses and best of all, after two weeks they left, but left all the bridges/treehouses intact.Not longer after that a development of split levels went in.Big picnic grove, Angeles Grove, right across from my house. Soccer games and company picnics every weekend. Sorry for the drift. Memories came flooding in.

Freeway said:

The area by BoA was part of the driving range/
Batting cages / mini golf place.

I believe that's why that center (Target/Best Buy/Home Depot) is called Crescent Center. It used to be the Crescent Driving Range (and mini golf and batting cages.)

@pschwei1 It would have been a different town.

@sac is correct about the location of the golf driving range, it was where Target/Whole Foods is now.

I may be slightly off on the location of the car wash, it might have been further back near the Expo, but it was at that end of the lot somewhere.

I don't believe I-280 "went through" Llewelyn Park as most people would define that phrase. It cut off a tiny sliver at the far southwestern and western border. I would be interested in evidence that more than a few houses were torn down, if any, but it's possible. The planners considered a tunnel, but ultimately rejected that option for a cut.

I never heard or saw any possibility of I-78 going through Maplewood. The eventual route through Union had a fair amount of relatively open land, or at least not as built up as M'wood compared to that part of Union. I would be interested in knowing if more of Hillside and the Weequahic section would have been impacted by proposed designs than by the final design. At least the route hugs the border between Newark and Irvington.

spontaneous said:

@sac is correct about the location of the golf driving range, it was where Target/Whole Foods is now.

I may be slightly off on the location of the car wash, it might have been further back near the Expo, but it was at that end of the lot somewhere.

Yeah it was by the expo. I remember going through it after many a trip to the union market to see "the socks and underwear" booth and then the comicbook booth. Also sometimes the guy with the blank tdk audio tapes that often weren't blank.

Yes Chopin, your right, technically 280 cut a corner of the Park, but it still knocked down homes. My husband grew up there and lived there during the dynamiting of the future highway, huge cracks developed in his house and a few friends had to leave their homes that were being demolished

joy said:

@Tom_R Never said we'd be better off without them. As others have posted, he took the path of least resistance.

I regret that I drew an incorrect inference from your initial post. My apologies. The inference did, and does, seem reasonable to me.

Be that as it may; what developer, builder or self-aggrandizing megalomaniac would choose a path of greater resistance than necessary? Which path from the George Washington Bridge to I-95, would have caused less disruption to Bronx communities than that chosen; and, at what dollar cost?

TomR