Dyl's Roads & Travels: NJ 17

NJ 17 is a multifaceted road through northeastern New Jersey. Starting as a local street, even the main stretch of North Arlington and Lyndhurst, then turning into a surface arterial at Route 3, then a full-blown Jersey freeway (Grade-separated interchanges, but direct RIRO access to local streets and businesses) all the way to I-287 in Mahwah. The route technically runs concurrent with I-287 to the New York State Line to meet up with NY 17, but the route effectively ends at I-287. And I don't think the concurrency to New York State is necessary if NYSDOT deletes the north-south segment of NY 17 and turns that into a southern extension of NY 32 with the coming of I-86.

The route was originally NJSHR 17N along surface roads before 1927. In 1927, the route became NJH 2, and its current alignment was built. The route was designated NJ 17 in 1942 to match NY 17.

NJ 17 on city streets:

Ridge Road:

NJ 17 begins at NJ 7 at the border of Kearny and North Arlington. The route follows Ridge Road up to NJ 3.

And we begin with directional confusion. CR 507 is not an east-west route, so I don't know what NJDOT was thinking signing CR 507 as east-west on this overhead sign blade. Maybe they forgot their own directional assignments!

This leads to NJ 7's directional confusion, but I'll save that for the NJ 7 page.

NJ 17 in North Arlington.

NJ 17 in Lyndhurst.

Decorative pillars on the NJ 17 bridge at Kingsland station.

Kingsland station along NJ 17.

Here we have it. Inscriptions on the bridge for NJH 2, the original designation of NJ 17.

Rutherford Avenue:

NJ 17 turns east-west on the compass and runs parallel to NJ 3 on Rutherford Avenue.

NJ 17 arterial:

The multilane NJ 17 arterial begins just south of* NJ 3 and continues until it transitions into a multilane Jersey freeway at CR 40 in Hasbrouck Heights. Why the asterisk? The arterial routing that defines most of NJ 17 effectively begins at NJ 3, but a stub section of the routing extends south to Rutherford Avenue. You'll see what I'll bring up after the first picture.

Rutherford Avenue comes to a sharp bend NB, and the multilane arterial comes to a sharp bend SB to join Rutherford Avenue. Why the sharp bend? This ties into the asterisk. The multilane alignment of NJ 17 (whether fully-fledged freeway, Jersey freeway, or arterial) was supposed to continue straight down to I-280 per 1972 plans. Likewise, the interchange with NJ 3 was built for this multilane alignment, including the short extensions south of NJ 3 seen today. However, funding caused the cancellation of the southern extension (and realignment) of NJ 17 down to I-280. In 1987, a shortened version of this extension was planned, this time to I-95 on the Western Spur of the New Jersey Turnpike at a new interchange (would this have been called Exit 15W-A [this was the one logged in NJ Turnpike Authority docs], 15A-W, 15W-X, or 15X-W?), yet that got cancelled too.

Notice how Newark is signed on the exit for NJ 3 WB. This is because with the extension being cancelled, the best route to Newark would be NJ 3 WB to NJ 21 SB.