The NJ 21 viaduct south from Newark has been replaced and is now fully open. Of course, I don't have any pictures of that, but I do have all of the old freeway signage.


Looking southward along the McCarter Highway in Newark, where it parallels New Jersey Transit train tracks for quite some distance before the viaduct that takes it to its end.


No Parking on This Side - or the other side - or anywhere else under the train viaduct.


And that viaduct is in pretty bad repair. This and the above photo courtesy HNTB Corporation.


A cool feature of the new freeway that was constructed north of Exit 11, finally completing NJ 21 after 30-40 years of planning, is that the concrete has been tinted to a slightly pinkish color. It's pretty nice as a change, especially with matching sound barrier - beats drab whitish-yellow any day. The colorful tile on a bridge abutment is courtesy HNTB Corp. Or at least the photo is.

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Northbound


New strangely shielded signs, approaching Bridge Street (the only way to get to I-280 WB, and the better way to I-280 EB). NJ conveniently forgot to mention that CR 508 East turns right here after a short duplex.


All of these are pointing to CR 506 SPUR, not just the plain route, using Clark St. (photos 3-4) and Passaic St. (photo 5) to get to Clay St. WB (photo 6) as an impromptu jughandle. The non-cutout shields will disappear (hopefully) when McCarter Highway is its full six lanes, but I fear these LGS's will never get their SPURs. Maybe now that I've posted these, NJDOT will read this and actually replace the signs I want them to for once!


Still in Newark, the sign is mounted on the old I-280 (originally NJ 58, or NJSHR 25A pre-renumbering) viaduct just west of the Stickel Drawbridge. See I-280 (link at bottom) for a description of this wacky half-interchange, which necessitates crossing the river at Bridge St. to cross back and head west.


It's always suspect when you see a BGS with a blank exit tab, the remnants of the old exit number, and "USE EXIT 5" scrawled in some blank space toward the bottom. Exit 4 was a left exit at the north end of the first of two viaducts (where, in both, NB 21 runs underneath SB 21 next to the Passaic River in order to use less land), cutting underneath the SB side before it had a chance to come back to ground level. Probably due to the fact that it was a fairly tight turn and somewhat blind to NB traffic, it has been grassed in, but rather than erect new signage, the patch-up was deemed adequate. SB, as you will see further down, the signage is normal and the exit is open.
UPDATE: One of these signs was knocked down a couple of years ago, and replaced with a new sign with the same text. This, despite the fact the exit hasn't been open for years. Amazing what bureaucracy can do, isn't it?


Now underneath the northern of the two NJ 21 two-level viaducts, with the southbound lanes on top (as they are for the southern one as well).


I don't know where the greenout on the Exit 8 advance sign came from, but it was only a temporary condition.


NJ 3 is important enough to get an extra advance NB BGS; the last sign is the ramp split. The interchange is fairly weird due to its proximity to both the Passaic River and railroad tracks. WB 3's ramp is a loop that then spawns a flyover into NB 21, EB 3's ramp to SB 21 follows the RR tracks and the ramp to NB 21 actually loops backward in a trumpet, joining the WB-NB ramp before it flies over. The other half of that trumpet is the combination of NB and SB 21 to WB 3 - thus the NB side does a full 180 to face SB and join the SB ramp, stretched out around the WB-SB loop ramp. They then cross back under 3 and turn 90 degrees around the EB-NB ramp to merge with EB 3. The SB-NB ramps to NJ 3 WB work the same way. Basically, the SB ramp splits in the NW quadrant of the interchange. The NB ramp has come up the side of the river northward, and then swings over 21 and drops between the two SB offramps. The right one goes to 3 WB, the left one becomes the outside of the trumpet.

The last assembly is on the ramp. 10B is southbound's 10, and there is no direct River Road access from that other direction.


Since NJ 21 wasn't extended north of Monroe Street (which is now Exit 12) until very recently, the signage for the rest of it is much newer.


NJ 21 merges into one lane, and left-merges into US 46 EB. That's it. NJ 20 pops out a short distance to the north, making an interesting case to renumber it as part of NJ 21 and go from having three disconnected pieces of 20 to none (click the link in that sentence to find out where the other ones were).

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Southbound


The first and second BGS's on NJ 21, coming off of US 46. The first one is actually before EB US 46 even passes over the newly formed NJ 21. Until 21 was complete, this was an interchange that led from 46 to Lexington Avenue, so that movement's been preserved from WB and to EB US 46, but the only way the western half of 46 gets to use the interchange is by pulling a U-ey... see the US 46 page (linked below) for more details.


Here there is a lopsided number of exits between the northbound and southbound sides, but that's because until recently, NB was about to end, so would have more offramps, while the SB freeway had just begun, and thus would have more onramps and fewer offramps. Oh, and NJDOT should learn how to trim trees.


Read the NB side for what's going on here around Exit 9; the last photo is the offramp split.


The southbound half of another set of two half-interchanges (Exit 6 northbound).


Southbound over the northern of two bilevel viaducts. The RR overpass hikes up its beams to allow SB 21 traffic underneath.


Unlike on the northbound side, where it was a tight left exit underneath the end of the southern viaduct, Exit 4 is intact SB.


Onto the McCarter Highway, an urban boulevard in Newark, where the "SPUR" is an afterthought, but unlike on the Garden State Parkway (or NJ 21 North, for that matter), at least it's there.

Northward onto US 46
Southward into US 1-9, US 22, or I-78
Onto parallel Broad Street in Newark
Onto CR 506 SPUR
Onto I-280
Onto CR 508
Onto NJ 7
Onto NJ 3
NJ 21 on Steve Anderson's nycroads.com
The old NJ 21 viaduct on Raymond Martin's njfreeways.com
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