The Parkway’s most dangerous stretch is getting a $193M overhaul

Listen to enough traffic reports on this station and you'll notice a pattern. It's not the Turnpike that comes up over and over. It's the Parkway. And I don't think that's a coincidence. The Turnpike mostly moves people through New Jersey, on their way somewhere else. The Parkway moves New Jersey to itself, up and down the eastern side of the state to work every morning, and every summer weekend, from Monmouth County to Cape May County and every county between, out to the Shore. If you ask me, the Garden State Parkway is this state's real main artery, and it's more or less the unofficial western border of what any of us actually consider "the Shore."

One of the roughest stretches for exactly that reason sits in Ocean County, and it's about to get some real attention. A $193 million reconstruction project covering roughly three miles of the Parkway between Exits 80 and 83, running through Berkeley Township, South Toms River, and Toms River, is set to begin construction in spring 2027.

What's actually getting rebuilt

The project targets Exits 80, 82, and 83 directly, with new and reconfigured entrance and exit ramps, longer acceleration and deceleration lanes, better shoulders and sight distances, and the reconstruction of 11 bridges along that corridor. The busiest piece of it may be Exits 82B and 82C, where four ramps connecting the Parkway to Route 37, the road that carries beachgoers out to Seaside Heights, Seaside Park, and the barrier island, will be redesigned with gentler curves instead of the tight cloverleaf loops that are there now. Additional work is planned around Route 9, Double Trouble Road, Lakehurst Road, and Indian Head Road.

SEE ALSO: Unbuilt NJ highways: the roads that never were

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The numbers behind the project

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Parkway, says the goal is straightforward: improve safety and traffic flow on a corridor with crash rates above the statewide average. State records show 63 crashes of varying severity happened on or near these three interchanges last year alone, including one fatality. NJTA spokesperson Tom Feeney said the project is currently in final design, with a public hearing expected in the near future and construction expected to start in spring 2027. Once it does, the work is expected to take approximately four years to complete.

Four years of construction on three miles of Parkway is going to be its own kind of headline eventually, and I'll be the first to say that. But if this is the stretch of road most responsible for getting Ocean County to work and getting the rest of us to the barrier island every summer, it's also the stretch that's earned the investment.