Author drives away turnpike misconceptions

BY JOHN DUNPHY
Staff Writer

Plenty of motorists have a story or two to share about the New Jersey Turnpike.

And many of them would probably not be very positive.

Angus Gillespie and Michael Aaron Rockland hoped to change those perceptions when they wrote “Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike,” an exhaustive and entertaining examination of the roadway that since 1951 has gotten billions of drivers up and down the state.

Tomorrow at noon, Gillespie will be at the Spotswood Public Library, Main Street, to provide a “virtual tour” of the oft-criticized and perhaps underappreciated New Jersey Turnpike.

A native of Virginia who has taught American Studies at Rutgers University since 1973, Gillespie said those born and bred in the Garden State often take the turnpike for granted.

“If you see it every day, sometimes you fail to recognize how remarkable it is,” he said. “As far as we were to determine, this is the most heavily traveled road, not only in the United States, but in the world.”

Opened in 1951, the New Jersey Turnpike was conceived to counter the explosion of motorists in the country.

Gillespie said the turnpike carries about 190 billion vehicles a year.

“That’s partly a factor of the population density of New Jersey,” he said. “We’re the fourth-smallest state, yet we have 8 million people. We have a greater density population than India.”

Mary Faith Chmiel, director for the Spotswood Library, said she felt Gillespie’s lecture was appropriate, given the time of year it’s being presented.

“So many people are going to get on the turnpike or have family that get on it to visit for Thanksgiving,” she said. “This is sort of tongue-in-cheek seasonal.”

Indeed, the Wednesday before the Thanksgiving holiday is the day the New Jersey Turnpike is used the most, according to Gillespie.

Despite the fact that the 54-year-old roadway is used day-in and day-out by millions of drivers, it has often gotten a bad rap.

While most Americans take for granted the interstate highway system, which connects roadways from state to state, it wasn’t until 1956 that it would become a reality, a whole four years after the opening of the turnpike, Gillespie said.

“It was way ahead of its time,” he said, noting its engineering superiority to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the first turnpike to be built.

“The New Jersey Turnpike was arguably superior,” Gillespie added. “It has gentler curves, more gradual grades, wider shoulders. No expense was spared.”

And no expense continues to be spared today. The professor said people often ask why tolls are still charged on a road that many feel must have been paid for years ago.

“The road of 2005 is not the road of 1951,” Gillespie said. “It’s constantly being widened and reimagined.”

Despite his praise, he also said there are definitely problems with the road.

“Like any institution that’s been around for more than 50 years, there are problems, most notably congestion,” Gillespie said.

“You always think of the smell, the oil refineries,” Chmiel said. “And people think that’s the sum total of New Jersey, though we all know that it’s not.”

Still, despite the turnpike’s less-than-pristine reputation, Gillespie said there’s more than one way to look at one of New Jersey’s most infamous landmarks.

“You can look at it as a blighted, ugly landscape,” he said. “But you can also see it as a source of energy, wealth and production.”

Gillespie, who is not affiliated with the New Jersey Turnpike, called to mind various T-shirts with negative slogans about New Jersey (one in particular, he recalled, said “New Jersey and Me: Going Nowhere Together”) and the strange kind of pride people get from saying they are from the most densely populated state in the country, the home of the New Jersey Turnpike.

“There’s a reverse pride in New Jersey that only the strong survive,” Gillespie added.

For more information about Angus Gillespie’s “virtual tour” of the New Jersey Turnpike, contact the Spotswood Public Library at (732) 251-1515.