Interchange Stage Left?

The train was half-full and quiet this morning, giving me time to reflect on a pretty dismal ride through the so-called Great State of New Jersey yesterday.

Like many, I’m a big fan of electronic highway media that keeps you up to date with traffic news (it’s not quite Clever Commute, but still). The best I’ve seen are the signs hovering over the Long Island Expressway, telling you traffic will be tight from exit 49 to 45. The less spectacular examples are the A.M. radio outfits operated by the highway authorities.

We were chugging along on the New Jersey Turnpike when the signs started warning of bad times ahead. Lights were flashing on the ‘Lights Will Flash in Case of Emergency’ signs, instructing us to tune to 1610 on our a.m. dial for details. We did so, and were told of trouble around “Interchange 7.”

Maybe I’m an idiot, but that sounded like a highway to me. Can’t you picture Tony Soprano shouting to Christopher on the cell, something like, “Chrissie, I’m taking care of some business on Interchange 7 near Newark…”

Turns out “Interchange” is a fancy highway authority word for “Exit.” C’mon, everyone I know calls them exits. The freakin’ green highway signs say “Exit.” If the radio announcements’ sole purpose is communicating with motorists, why the f*** say “Interchange?”

We encountered at least a half-dozen signs imploring us to slow down because of construction and pending traffic, and the neon yellow signs were in all sorts of disrepair; one intending to say “Congestion” merely said “on.” I question the logic of the half-dozen signs; I think it’s safe to say that not a single soul actually slowed down upon seeing them. You slow down when the cars in front of you slow down, right? If anything, you speed up when you see ‘slow down’ signs, so as to make up as much ground as possible before the traffic sets in.  

Finally, we caught the traffic, and crawled for several exits. We were again told to tune to 1610, only this time it didn’t come through. Is the a.m. frequency market suddenly red-hot again after, oh, six decades of dormancy, listeners suddenly clamoring for their fill of Ron Lundy and Cousin freakin’ Brucie?

Traffic eventually cleared around Exit…sorry, Interchange 8, and we were clear until the next blast of grief on the Parkway.

Also irritating: Once we’d successfully exited Jersey for New York (yo, thanks for the cheap gas, Jersey), we encountered more blinking yellow lights on that 87/287 stretch heading south. (This, after five hours in the minivan in which Little G, fueled by an endless array of new Christmas presents, refused to nap.) We turned to the a.m. station offered up on the signs and were told of trouble from exit 14A (the Garden State Parkway exit from which we’d arrived) to the Tappan Zee. All I could think of was the final 20 minutes of our trip taking, oh, two hours or so. But we breezed right onto the Tap, and were home within minutes.

Not that I wanted traffic or anything, but it sure was frustrating to be told of terrible upcoming traffic when nothing, in fact, was forthcoming.

At least the Thruway guys refer to exits as exits.