This was NJ 20 until 1988, when NJDOT decided not to connect it to current NJ 20. This history means that NJ 120 could be considered an abandoned child of 20. Bad daddy.

Starting SB:


Between NJ 17 and CR 503, NJ 120 is an expressway with a few traffic lights skirting the northern edge of the Meadowlands. Once it hits 503, the traffic volumes that crop up when there's a basketball or hockey game require a freeway from there southward to NJ 3. The two I believe are multiplexed to 3, but 503 is considered by at least SB signage to start at 120.


A bit dark, but you can see the only exit on the brief NJ 120 freeway that isn't either its end or 120.


Clearly there was once an option for traffic heading right or left, with local lanes on the left and mainline on the right. What you don't see is that there was also an NJ 3 WB offramp merging in here from the left. The left exit that now doesn't exist (Secaucus/LOCAL STREETS, with NORTH SERVICE ROAD on the bottom) once followed the current NJ 3 EB-NJ 120 NB ramp, which is now two lanes in one direction but had carried both directions. My guess is that when the new WB lanes of 3 were added to the north, part of the original highway configuration was kept, i.e. the median separating local lanes from express, or else NJDOT simply wanted to reduce the need for a multilane crossover in a short distance to the Secaucus exit, which was NJ 153. NJ 153, Paterson Plank Road, was decommissioned, and the exit was moved to Meadowlands Parkway, leaving these SB signs the only remnants of a long-discontinued configuration. I can't imagine how bad EB-NB traffic bound for then-Brendan Byrne Arena was with only a single lane.

The rest of the photos are NB, starting with the ramp from NJ 3 EB.

This BGS is technically before milepost 0 on NJ 120.


The NB progression on the brief freeway, where you see that CR 503 NB is co-signed with NJ 120, unlike the SB arrangement. NJ 120 WB is Paterson Plank Road; the EB Plank was partially realigned around the interchange, and ultimately ends in the middle of the Meadowlands (but not before crossing underneath the NJ Turnpike Western Spur). A discontinuous section of the road, the original route that is now NJ 3, runs up and down the hillside in Hoboken, before disappearing in a grid of streets laid over the original route.


Paterson Plank Road continues west of here for a short while before disappearing into suburbia. Click for closeup from Scott Colbert.

NJ 120's south end is NJ 3
NJ 120's north end is NJ 17
Onto CR 503
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