History
Plans for the Route 90 freeway were first made in 1964, a year after the Betsy Ross Bridge over the Delaware River was proposed. In 1965, Route 90 was legislated to run from the proposed bridge in Pennsauken east to Route 73. In 1969, construction began on the Betsy Ross Bridge and its approach roads. A 1970 proposal to include the planned Route 90 freeway as a part of the Interstate Highway System was denied. The Betsy Ross Bridge itself was finished in 1974, but did not open to traffic until April 30, 1976 due to controversies concerning the approach roads. At this time, Route 90 was completed between the Betsy Ross Bridge and U.S. Route 130. In March 1986, construction began on Route 90 between U.S. Route 130 and Route 73 in Cinnaminson. This section of the route, which cost $23 million ($50 million today), was opened on October 25, 1988.
Originally, the Route 90 was intended to be a much longer freeway than it is today. When first proposed, it was to extend to Interstate 295, the New Jersey Turnpike and Route 73 in Mount Laurel. There were two proposed routes of this freeway. The first proposal would have run south of Route 73 through built-up areas of Cherry Hill, Maple Shade, and Mount Laurel, along the South Branch of the Pennsauken Creek. Due to the route of this proposal, it was dropped in favor of a more northerly route that ran to the north of Route 73 through less developed areas.This freeway would have cost $42 million ($180 million today) and was to be completed in 1975. There were plans to extend the freeway further south than Route 73 in Mount Laurel. In 1966, a proposal was made for Route 90 to run south to a proposed Route 38 freeway that was to run from Camden to Monmouth County. Another proposal in 1969 called for a $14 million ($90 million today) extension of Route 90 south to a proposed U.S. Route 30 freeway in Berlin and possibly the Atlantic City Expressway. Due to financial limitations and feared environmental impacts, the southern extension of Route 90 to Mount Laurel was canceled by 1980.
Across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, there were plans of extending the freeway northwest from the Interstate 95 interchange. This limited access highway, which was to be called the Pulaski Expressway and be designated Pennsylvania Route 90, was to parallel the Frankford Creek and Tacony Creek and connect with U.S. Route 1, which also was to be a limited access freeway. This proposed freeway, which was to cost from $125 to $150 million ($300 to $400 million today) and be completed in 1981, was canceled by 1980 due to community opposition and financial troubles. Vestiges of this extension can be seen from Interstate 95 in the form of stub ramps and the mainline coming to an abrupt end as a barricaded bridge.
Read more about this topic: New Jersey Route 90
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)