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Hotel Booking Ten years ago today, local and state officials celebrated the long-awaited completion of Route 24 through Morris County. In congratulatory speeches, they lauded the 7.5-mile stretch that finished the connection between Routes 78 and 287, a connection that would reduce commuter travel time and unclog the traffic-choked arteries of downtown Chatham and Madison.

Travel Agency Today, officials say Route 24 has mostly lived up to that billing. The new road opened the burgeoning suburbs of western Morris County to points eastward, contributing to economic development in Millburn and Summit and leading scores of shoppers to the doors of the Mall at Short Hills.

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Cheap Hotel But popularity has its price, and some local officials contend Route 24 has become such a draw that the highway and local roads are seeing traffic problems again. According to the most recent traffic counts, more than 80,000 cars a day traverse the freeway in Chatham. When the highway opened, officials said 40,000 vehicles a day were expected to travel the stretch.

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Flight Booking "It is exceeding its capacity at rush hour," said Frank Reilly, executive director of the Morris County Department of Transportation Management. "It has been such a success, it is breaking down because of too much traffic."

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Travel Agent Anyone who drives Route 24 during the rush hour can attest to the congestion, particularly near interchanges and in areas where the highway goes from three lanes to two, such as near the Chatham border. Car after car comes to a halt as motorists, sharing the road with numerous tractor-trailers, negotiate the bottleneck.

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Hotel Chicago The state has one congestion-relieving improvement planned for Route 24 -- adding a second lane to the interchange from Route 287 southbound to Route 24 east. The $4 million project is in the final design phase, with a construction contract scheduled to be awarded in May 2003, said DOT spokesman Micah Rasmussen.

Online Booking As for additional expansion to Route 24, he said, the state has nothing planned.

Travel Health Insurance "You cannot build your way out of congestion," he said. "The more capacity you build on a highway, the more cars you bring. It brings more development, it brings more sprawl and it brings more cars."

Hotel Reservation Rasmussen and Cliff Sobel, director of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, point to other alternatives such as developing hubs with mass transit systems, staggering work day starts by companies, van pooling and intersection improvements.

London Hotel Booking Officials in towns such as Chatham and Madison say something needs to be done. While Route 24 initially alleviated congestion on the old Route 24 -- now Route 124 -- local elected officials contend their traffic headaches are back.

Discount Travel "It seems to be back to where it was before Route 24 opened," said Chatham Mayor Herbert Kiehn. "Route 24 really had an impact. Main Street had quite a bit less traffic. Now the traffic is back again, and Route 24 is congested, too."

Orlando Hotel What's more, congestion has spilled into side streets such as Park and Ridgedale avenues in Madison and Shunpike Road, Southern Boulevard and Lafayette Avenue in the Chathams. Those once quiet streets are now used as shortcuts to avoid the aggravation on the main arteries.

Booking Agency "I take the back roads. I don't want to deal with that mess. I avoid it like the plague," said Ken Bennett of Chatham, who often commutes to West Paterson, but never ventures near Main Street or Route 24.

International Travel Medical Farther east, officials in Summit say they have seen increased traffic on their local roads because of the lack of off-ramps farther west on Route 24.

New York Hotel A recent traffic study confirmed that perception, said Cindy Martin, a Summit councilwoman and head of the council's public safety committee. The study suggested most of the traffic on River Road in Summit, for example, was cut-through traffic. Martin noted that River Road was one of the last exits off Route 24 before Florham Park.

Online Travel Booking "If you want to get to Chatham or Madison, for instance, you probably would want to get off in Summit and enter those communities along River Road," she said.

Travel Medical Insurance But Summit also has seen positive consequences from Route 24. When Joe Steiner first came to work at the Suburban Chambers of Commerce in 1977, the advertising campaign for downtown Summit went: "No roads lead to Summit, but it's worth the trip."

Miami Hotel "You had to know how to get here and you had to get here," Steiner said. Now though, it's easier.

Air Deccan Booking "Now you have 78, 24 -- from wherever you are, I tell you how to get to 78 to 24 and two exits and you're in our downtown," he said. "Now it's become 'all roads lead to Summit.'"

Las Vegas Nevada Travel Downtown Millburn also has seen advantages from Route 24.

Las Vegas Nv Hotel "It has brought a lot more people from the Morris County area into our downtown," said Pat Holden, executive director of the Downtown Millburn Development Alliance, an organization formed 10 years ago to manage Millburn's special improvement district.

Hotel Florence Booking Online And perhaps the greatest benefit has come to the Mall at Short Hills. Mike McAvinue, the mall's general manager, can think of one way to describe the Route 24 extension.

Orlando Travel "It's been a blessing," he said. "An absolute blessing. It certainly helped us in terms of our business."

Hilton Hotel McAvinue said the mall "was pretty much a ghost town in the '80s and early '90s." But in 1995, aided in large part by the construction of the Route 24 extension, which brought in shoppers from ritzy western suburbs, the shopping center was able to make a major image upgrade.

Booking Delta Com In 1995, the mall added more than 300,000 square feet plus two large department stores. "We were able to work a deal with Saks and Neiman Marcus, some very unique stores at the time. The merchandising matched the demographics," McAvinue said.

Travel Insurance Online West of the mall, Chatham and Madison merchants had their own concerns before Route 24 opened. They worried whether less traffic would mean less business.

London Hotel "Business owners were predicting that once the highway opened, they'd be going out of business and Chatham would be a ghost town," said John Tomasulo, the owner of John and Michelle's Best Little Luncheonette. "But Chatham is far from being a ghost town. As far as taking traffic away and ruining businesses, that was a bunch of baloney."

Online Hotel Booking In fact, certain parts of Morris County also have seen economic development as a result of the extension. Chris Marra, executive director of the Morris Area Development Group, said the highway paved the way for some growth at the edge of Hanover and Florham Park at Columbia Turnpike and Park Avenue.

Travel Insurance Two dumpy buildings that once claimed that corner -- including the old headquarters of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce -- were eventually replaced by a major 135-room hotel and a 150,000-square-foot office building. Those were two multimillion dollar investments with quick access to the highway and area employers, Marra said.

Paris Hotel "It led to better things in that area along Park Avenue and made the Exxon property more valuable when Exxon left," Marra said.

Airline Booking It is the future of the Exxon property in Florham Park that has raised new debate over the future of Route 24. Ten years ago, Madison and Chatham successfully lobbied against connectors to the highway in their towns, saying access to the highway would change the character of neighborhoods and bring more traffic to town.

Travel Trailer Now, developers of the former Exxon site are planning to build an office park on the 473-acre property. According to the zoning law Florham Park has proposed, to build the site out completely, they would need the state to approve a new interchange. Madison and the Chathams are fighting the Florham Park's zoning of the property in court.

San Francisco Hotel Some officials, such as Reilly in Morris County's planning and development department, say another interchange just might be the answer to traffic congestion.

Air Ticket Booking But officials in Madison and Chatham have not changed their minds. "It is not on the table for discussion," said Madison Mayor Jack Dunne. "We would fight connector roads with every fiber of our being. It would ruin neighborhoods with too much traffic."

Cheap Travel State officials said they understand community concerns about traffic, and any proposals for a new interchange would have to be weighed against potential for sprawl.

Bangkok Hotel "From a transportation point of view, we do the best we can with the system that we have," Rasmussen said. "Our priority at the department is fixing the infrastructure that's there, rather than building new infrastructure."

Music Booking For Paul Suegling, who drives from his home in Mendham to his optician shop in Millburn every day, traffic has become a part of life.

Travel And Tourism "It's gotten progressively worse," he said of Route 24. But in that sense, he added, this highway is no different than most in the Garden State: "It's just too many cars and not enough roads."

New York City Hotel By Paula Saha and Bill Swayze
Star-Ledger - 11/17/2002

Topic: Transportation

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