As you can see, the southern end of CR 531, at the southwestern edge of the Tangle, courtesy Lou Corsaro (which you may not have been able to see). The font on the green sign is slightly off.


I will give a piece of candy to you if you can tell me how to anchor the fallen sign. It looks like it was bracketed in the middle to the traffic signal, and then the top bracket... somethinged. Disappeared? Melted? This is on the jughandle from CR 514 EB, where CR 531 NB begins.


Northbound at US 1. As you can see, CR 531 NB traffic to I-287 must use US 1 NB. Keep note of this.


SB across from the above sign. But the button-copy goodness is just beginning...


Voilą! It's amazing that the original shield still stands, given how tenaciously NJDOT has been pursuing such shields (just look at what happened on NJ 495 EB at US 1-9). Remember my note? Southbound, the situation is reversed - I-287 SB traffic to US 1 SB must use CR 531 SB, meaning a whole bunch of traffic sees this sign every day. Good for them. To see this sign in a little better light, click for a closeup courtesy Lou Corsaro.

I have some sad news to report. Again, in my quest to document everything old and cool out there, I tipped NJDOT off that they had to replace these signs, and without so much as offering me the old 1 shield, these are all gone.


Old stuff heading north through Metuchen.


CR 531 is by no means an east-west road. That said, it sort of angles north-northwest to south-southeast, so this mistake could be at least understandable. The problem is, this shield was posted SOUTHBOUND, which if anything heads slightly east. The northbound shield is correctly labelled NORTH.


I don't think Middlesex County ever used white numerals/letters on shields, so this is probably just a very faded older shield.


And that's it for... the first half of CR 531. County maintenance takes a break in Plainfield, but CR 531 works its way to North Plainfield and keeps right on going.


Front St. WB in Plainfield just as CR 531 picks back up. Of course, CR 531 technically goes both ways here, and neither is county-maintained until the Union line is crossed.


Now into North Plainfield, Somerset County instead of Plainfield, Union County, and CR 531 magically reappears a few blocks to the east on Watchung instead of Park with a Somerset-(former-)standard white-lettered shield. Watchung Ave. and Park Ave., which becomes Somerset St. in North Plainfield, are each two-way but only carry one direction of CR 531, because north of US 22 the two streets are one-way until they come back together.


Inside the CR 527/CR 531 circle, the first photo is NB on both routes, and then the second is SB at CR 653.


Past the shield atop this page (on Somerset CR 622 WB) we finally come to the real end of CR 531, though it's not too hard to extend it up New Vernon Rd. to Glen Alpin Rd. toward Mendham and CR 510.


What not to do. Ever. I don't care if you hate your constituents, this is a punishment worse than disenfranchisement. These should be melted down, but no melter deserves such a fate. (Are those signs glowing PINK?!) Serial felonists should have to disassemble these signs with their bare hands, all the time singing showtunes. Then you can release them, because if they haven't slit their throats with one of these deformities (oh, by the way, the CR 512 shield should have arrows pointing both ways), they must have reformed back into sanity. Look at the previous caption, with all the pretty signs that were destroyed to pave the way for this. The terrorists have truly won.

Onto CR 514
Onto US 1
To I-287
Onto CR 501
Onto CR 527
Onto CR 512
Into Somerset County
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