The best stretch of highway in New Jersey and why it feels that way

I am going to say something that sounds like hyperbole and I want you to stay with me.

The best stretch of highway in New Jersey — and I will go further and say one of the best in the entire country — is the six miles of Route 295 leading up to the Scudder Falls Bridge in Ewing, over the Delaware River and into Pennsylvania. Every time I drive it I have the same thought. This is what a road is supposed to feel like.

I know. You are already skeptical. But hear me out.

Three lanes in each direction, wide and long exit ramps, a full shoulder on both sides, smooth new pavement, bright lane markings. The road is open. It breathes. It gives you room. When you are on it you do not feel like you are threading a needle or bracing for the next pothole or watching the truck in the right lane drift toward you because the lanes are too narrow for both of you to exist comfortably. You feel like the people who designed this road actually thought about the people who would drive it.

That feeling has a name. It is called infrastructure that works.

What This Road Used to Be

For years, commuters who crossed between New Jersey and Pennsylvania at this spot dealt with daily backups in both directions. The original Scudder Falls Bridge opened in 1961 — four lanes, no shoulders worth mentioning, interchanges so tightly spaced there were no acceleration or deceleration lanes at all. By 2002 it had been given a Level of Service grade of F during peak hours. F. The worst possible rating. The bridge was carrying 55,000 vehicles a day on a structure designed for 40,000.

It was also past the end of its structural service life and similar in design to the Mianus River Bridge in Connecticut, which collapsed fatally in 1983. The old bridge was not just aggravating. It was overdue.

Planning for a replacement began in 2003. The project eventually totaled $534 million — the largest single construction initiative in the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission's history. The new upstream span opened July 10, 2019. The downstream span followed August 18, 2021. A shared-use walking and cycling path opened that November — the only crossing of its kind on the entire Delaware River corridor that allows cyclists to ride across without dismounting.

Yes, the project added a toll. Two dollars E-ZPass, five dollars toll-by-plate, westbound only. I do not mind paying it. It is one of the few tolls in New Jersey where you can look around while you pay and understand exactly what your money built.

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Night and Day

Drive Route 295 at Scudder Falls and then go drive Route 1 through Middlesex County. Or Routes 1 and 9 anywhere. Or Route 130. Or 287. Or 22. Or Route 4.

Those roads are too tight. Too rough. Crumbling in places, patched in others, the patches rougher than what they replaced. Lane markings faded. Shoulders that disappear without warning. Merge situations that require more faith than geometry. They were built for a New Jersey that no longer exists and nobody has ever gone back and rebuilt them for the one that does.

Scudder Falls is what happens when someone actually does the work. The full rebuild. The wide lanes, the real shoulders, the properly spaced interchanges, the smooth surface that does not rattle your fillings loose at sixty-five miles an hour. It is not a small difference. It is a completely different experience of what driving is supposed to feel like.

The Bridge Has a Name Worth Knowing

The Scudder Falls Bridge takes its name from Richard Betts Scudder, who died in 1754 near what was then called Scudder's Falls — really an area of rapids on the Delaware, about half a mile north of where the bridge now stands. The falls themselves are gone from common memory. The name stayed.

The Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park has an entrance just north of the bridge signed as the Scudders Falls unit, if you have ever wondered what that sign means. Now you know.

And if you want to walk or ride a bike across the Delaware River with a view that most people driving past at highway speed never slow down to see — the Scudder Path walkway is there. It opened November 2021. Cross it once and you will understand why people who live near this bridge consider themselves quietly lucky. Note: When I went to walk it today, I noticed they are doing construction on the walkway on weekdays.  This sign indicates it's open weekends.

New Jersey has infrastructure problems. Everyone who drives here knows it. But Scudder Falls is proof that when the money gets spent right and the planning gets done right, the result is a road that actually contributes to your sense of well-being.

I am not overstating that. I think about it every time I drive it.