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So driving back from my job in E. Brunswick to my brother's in Hazlet, I passed over the Parkway at about 5:30, fully expecting to see a crawling, jam-packed road full of people leaving for the 4th of July weekend. However, I saw a Parkway with lighter traffic than even a regular, non-summer Friday.
Later, my brother came back from Bergen County, and confirmed to me (before I even said anything) that the Parkway was so light and he sailed down with no problems except for one slowdown in Montvale where a car had driven into the ditch in the wide median. Even with that slowdown he made the trip in less than an hour.
What's going on? My theory is that so many people figured that today would be such a horrible mess on the Parkway that they have put off traveling till later in the night or later in the weekend, but anyone who made the trip would have been very pleasantly surprised.
I don't know when everyone did their traveling. I had to go to Woodbury Thursday after work and expected a ton of travelers heading down a day early on my trip home, and it was actually one of the lighter rides I've encountered. My family is headed down this evening, we'll see if the light traffic holds! The town seems crowded, so I don't think it's that people skipped coming this year.
I live in Ocean County right smack in the middle of things and I have to say the overall crowd here is lighter than most years. I have no idea why - the weather is great and it's looking to be a fun weekend overall. I was out in my boat and it's not as crazy on the water as it usually is, either.
I think the above-poster's idea may be correct. The GSP is usually such torture for folks traveling here from up north that people are alternating travel schedules. I will say, however, that I noticed a ton of people coming here on Thursday, so I think given that 4th of July falls on a weekend, people are turning it into a 4/5 day weekend and many arrived early, so the traffic has been laid out over a number of days from Thurs-Sat.
Around 1:30pm or so, there was some major traffic between exits 75 and 84 on the GSP-southbound side. Looks like a lot of people decided to leave today (Saturday) also. However, there was also some areas of heavy southbound traffic yesterday (Friday).
my friend hit traffic friday afternoon. exit ~140's 130's?
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