talking about roads this time

My train buddy and I were talking about the Garden State Parkway the other morning.  I seem to remember a time when it wasn't all there, thinking that way because we used to use Route 1/9 to get to the shore from north Jersey when I was a kid.  I even knew exactly how many telephone poles we passed on the way, and would tell my father when he had to turn to hit Church Road.  

He (train buddy, not father) insisted the Parkway was always there.  Of course, as I've mentioned somewhere else in the blog, he's about five years younger than me, so his mileage may vary.

Wikipedia is a good place to find all sorts of arcane information. Here's what they say about the construction of the GSP:

Route S101 was a northern extension of Route 101 planned from Hackensack through Paramus to the New York state line near Montvale. The section from Hackensack to Paramus was never built; the section from Paramus to the state line would become part of the Garden State Parkway.

The Parkway was originally designated as the Route 4 Parkway when it was started in 1947 in Union County, but, due to lack of funds, only 11 miles (18 km) were completed by 1950. The solution was for the state to establish the New Jersey Highway Authority in 1952 to oversee construction and operation as a self-liquidating toll road.^[5] Much of the original section, between exits 129 and 140, was long administered by the New Jersey Department of Transportation, and has always been untolled. The segment can be distinguished by the stone facing on the overpasses.

The Parkway was constructed between 1946 and 1957 to connect suburban northern New Jersey with resort areas along the Atlantic coast and to alleviate traffic on traditional north–south routes running through each town center, such as US 1, US 9, and Route 35. Unofficially, it has two sections: the "metropolitan section" north of the Raritan River and the "shore section" between the Raritan River and Cape May. Only 18 miles (29 km) had been constructed by 1950, but taking a cue from the successful New York State Thruway, on April 14, 1952, the New Jersey Legislature created the New Jersey Highway Authority, empowered to construct, operate, and maintain a self-sufficient toll parkway from Paramus to Cape May.

The landscape architect and engineer in charge of the newly named "Garden State Parkway" was Gilmore David Clarke, of the architectural firm of Parsons, Brinkerhof, Hall and MacDonald,^[5] who had worked with Robert Moses on the parkway systems around New York City. Clarke's design prototypes for the Parkway combined the example of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a model of efficiency with parallels in the German Autobahn routes of the 1930s, with the Merritt Parkway model that stressed a planted "green belt" for beauty. Both design models featured wide planted medians to prevent head-on collisions and mask the glare of on-coming headlights. The Garden State Parkway was designed to have a natural feel. Many trees were planted, and the only signs were those for exits—there were no distracting billboards. Most of the signs were constructed from wood, or a dark-brown metal, instead of the chrome bars used on most other highways. The guardrails were also made from wood and dark metal. Most early overpasses were stone, but then changed to concrete, with green rails and retro etchings, popular around the 1950s and 1960s. These are now in decay and being replaced by sleek, new bridges. The Parkway was designed to curve gently throughout its length so that drivers would remain alert and not fall asleep at the wheel.

Most of the metropolitan section is like any other expressway built in the 1950s through heavily populated areas. The shore section parallels U.S. Route 9 and runs through unspoiled wilderness in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. In Cape May County, the Parkway has three traffic lights (at exits 8, 10, and 11 respectively), but these will be eliminated in the future, with construction of an overpass at exit 10 in Cape May Court House and Stone Harbor scheduled to begin in September 2012.

The Parkway had an old alignment before the Great Egg Harbor Bridge was completed. It was detoured onto U.S. Route 9 and over the Beesley's Point Bridge. This old alignment still exists today and is slowly being consumed by nature.

The Garden State Parkway was off-limits to motorcycles until Malcolm Forbes pushed successfully for legislation to allow them.^[6]

On July 9, 2003, Governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey's plan to merge the operating organizations of the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike into one agency was completed.^[7]

Literature from the time of the Parkway's construction indicates that the Parkway would become toll-free once bonds used for its construction were paid off. However, additional construction projects, plus the expectation that the Parkway will pay for its own maintenance and policing (and the massive E-ZPass project) make it unlikely it will become toll-free in the foreseeable future.

The Parkway was also planned to be the southern terminus for NJ 55 at milemarker 19. This was cancelled after the conclusion that the highway ran through too many wetland areas. The idea is still being revisited after frequent traffic jams on NJ 47.

Later construction

• In the first half of the 1980s, exit 171 was added in Woodcliff Lake, serving the mushrooming office complexes replacing farmland along nearby Chestnut Ridge Road.^[8]
• On May 1, 1993, a travel center was opened at the Montvale Service Area, replacing one that burned to the ground in 1991.^[9]
• In 2003, the Lakewood section received a brand-new southbound exit and northbound entrance, exit 89. In order to expand the Parkway for the interchange, the Cedar Bridge Road bridge had to be torn down and rebuilt. The whole project was completed in November 2003 and cost about $16.23 million.^[10]
• In Waretown, a $16.4 million project was completed for new bridges at exit 69. The construction was completed in March 2007. Along with the new interchange came two new toll plazas. The Parkway was widened at the location it goes under County Route 532.^[11]
• The same company who did the exits 69 and 89 construction had also done work on exit 100, 20 years before the exit 69 construction. That project included demolishing all then-current bridges and building new ones along the newly rerouted Route 66 and Route 33. This project, in Tinton Falls, cost $21.67 million to complete.^[12]
• Installation of Variable Message Signs along the Parkway began 1992 with the installation of approximately 25 Daktronics signs. Some VM signs were installed on new sign structures while others were added to existing GO signs. Initially, the signs were provided with telephone service. A controller with a modem was installed in a cabinet near the signs. Messages on the signs were changed manually using software on personal computers in the GSP headquarters building in Woodbridge.

So, not conclusive.  Not enough detail of what portions were built and put in service when.  But I don't think the entire "metropolitan section" existed when I was a kid, tho it was likely under construction.  I don't remember very much detail about riding in our 1949 Ford, other than a few occasions when we'd bring bushels of chicken manure back north for my Grandmother's tomato garden (there was a chicken farm down the road from our summer place, we'd get eggs fresh from the nest, and all the manure you'd care to spend time with).  Obvious why those trips were memorable.  But I do remember spending untold hours in the 1957 Ford on the Route 9 bridge over the Raritan River, shore traffic backed up forever, and the Parkway bridge not yet in service.  Maybe it was under construction, still.  But we were on the Route 9 bridge, and generally used Rte 1/9 for the whole trip, catching it at the end of the Pulaski Skyway and riding it down to that left turn on Church Road, which was in the middle of nowhere then, and is probably in Toms River now. 

Another website, http://www.nycroads.com/roads/garden-state/, says about the construction timetable:

PARKWAY CONSTRUCTION: Under State Highway Commissioner Spencer Miller, Jr., construction of the original NJ 4 Parkway began in 1946 in Clark Township, Union County. Progress was slow: by 1950, only 18 miles of the toll-free parkway had been completed as follows: Cape May County, milepost 8 to milepost 12 Ocean County, milepost 80 to milepost 83 Middlesex and Union counties, milepost 129 to milepost 140 With new financing backing from the New Jersey Highway Authority, ground was broken for construction of the Garden State Parkway on July 2, 1952. During 1954, one section after another was opened to traffic in time for the summer tourist season.  By August of that year, some 80 miles of parkway were opened, providing uninterrupted travel between Irvington and Manahawkin, including the Raritan River Bridge. By late October, the parkway had been completed all the way south to Cape May. Maybe part of the problem used to be that getting from Kearny, where we lived, to the Parkway was not as simple as getting to the Pulaski Skyway.  I think it was on Orange Ave, this was long before I-280 was there, and you'd have to go over the Stickel Bridge into Newark, then go a ways to find the Parkway entrance, almost in Irvington, crossing some trolly line on the way.  Once the riots hit in the late 1960s, you just plain didn't go that way.  Then they built the I-280 connector.  Which is another story in and of itself. So maybe if you are five years or so younger than me, the Parkway has always been there.  What a concept.