The Parkway’s most dangerous stretch is getting a $509M 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 multi-million-dollar 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 in spring 2027, according to a report published by NJ.com.

Tom Feeney, a spokesman with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, told New Jersey 101.5 that the project is estimated to cost $509 million.

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, NJ.com reports.

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, according to NJ.com. Additional work is planned around Route 9, Double Trouble Road, Lakehurst Road and Indian Head Road, the NJ.com report indicated.

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

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The numbers behind the project

The NJTA, which oversees the Parkway, said 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. Feeney told NJ.com that the project is currently in final design, with a public hearing expected in the near future. 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.

(Editor's Note: This story has been updated from a previous version to correct the estimate of the project's cost.)