Garden State Parkway

New Jersey Turnpike Authority lawyers are seeking costs against the regular anti-road protesters at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign (TSTC) for a "frivolous" lawsuit against widening the Garden State Parkway. TSTC is suing for an injunction to stop work on the widening project MP30 to MP80, a stretch of 80km (50 miles) on the Jersey shore.

New Jersey Turnpike Authority says work was finished on the new Driscoll Bridge on the Garden State Parkway with all 15 lanes open from May 20 2009. The bridge at Milepost 126 just south of the interchange with the New Jersey Turnpike consists of two heavily rebuild and rehabilitated spans and a third new span side by side over the  Raritan River in Perth Amboy, 42km (26 miles) southwest of Central Park in New York City.

Toll tokens minted for the New Jersey Highway Authority (NJHA) for use on its Garden State Parkway in the 1980s all had the year "1952" stamped on them, 1952 being the year the NJHA was established. With coins the convention is that they are stamped with the year of minting, but that convention wasn't applied to Garden State Parkway toll tokens. (see picture) We've been wrestling with this after we carried an advertisement for a 1952 token.

We're wondering: were we conned by a guy seeking to sell to collectors a 1952 New Jersey Highway Authority token for the Garden State Parkway? We wrote up his advertisement Feb 7 here:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3988

A New Jersey reader has just told us he only remembers tokens coming into widespread use in about 1990.

Jerry Stutts now 78 has always been a collector, he tells us, but he's gradually selling off collectibles to supplement his social security income. He wonders if any readers are interested in buying from him a 1952 Garden State Parkway token. Dated 1952 it must be one of the first tokens to be used in  automatic coin machines (ACMs) anywhere because we know the Garden State Parkway was where they were first deployed, and it was opening in stages around that time.

Garden State Parkway toll tokens will cease to be accepted in payment of tolls in the new year, signaling the end of an era for an early mode of automatic toll payment. The tokens were last sold Jan 1 2002 but motorists hoarded so many - an estimated 50 million -  they continue to be used in small numbers in the Parkway's automatic coin machines.  Sold in rolls of 30 for $10 vs $10.50 for the same number of cash tolls they have offered a 4.8% discount over coins since 1989.

Joseph Fischbach, a toll plaza superintendent on the southern part of the Garden State Parkway has been sentenced to three years in jail after pleading guilty to stealing over $11k in tolls.

A judge in state superior court also ordered Fischbach to repay the money he stole.

He was arrested in May 2007 after an investigation established he was regularly taking coins from the coin vaults of automatic coin machines.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-04-26

Aggressive driving by his New Jersey police driver Trooper Robert Rasinski was the main cause of the crash that nearly killed state Governor Jon Corzine on the Garden State Parkway Apr 12. And obsolete engineering designs of the steel guardrail in the median caused what should be a safety feature of the Parkway to become a near-lethal spear that reared up and tore through the Governor's out-of-control vehicle.

The police report on the accident which seriously injured New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine on the Garden State Parkway (GSP) Thursday evening says that the guardrail end "penetrated the vehicle and struck both (the driver State Trooper) Rasinski and Governor Corzine."