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Pulaski Skyway: Bumper Cars Over Kearny
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If you drive on the Pulaski (and this is your last year to do so for awhile), don't look for a shoulder to cry on...
Location: Driving East, toward the Holland Tunnel, from Kearny to Jersey City.
My trip began with an ascent up one of those long, two-way ramps that feed into the center of the highway. (You see another one of those in the second picture.) That forces you to enter the highway in the left-hand, or fast, lane. Which would be fine if there was a speed-up lane or shoulder so you could accelerate and ease into the flow of traffic.
Forget that. The angle of your car as you stand at a complete stop at the top of the entry ramp is such that it is very difficult to look over your right shoulder and see oncoming traffic, which is partly blocked from your vision by the heavy steel-concrete thing (barrier? fence?) that divides eastbound from westbound lanes.
So you have little choice but to wait for a break in the traffic and floor it. And keep that pedal mashed to the floor and hope you're driving a car that responds quickly and stably to such four-alarm inputs.
After that, everything else the Pulaski throws you—no shoulders, whizzing traffic, rough pavement—is a piece of cake.
Read Ingrid Steffensen's love letter to the high-altitude hi-jinks of the Pulaski in the Exit Ramp of our new February issue. Ingrid, author of Fast Girl: Don't Brake Until You See the Face of God and Other Good Advice from the Racetrack, knows whereof she speaks.
Tags: Jersey City | traffic | Kearny | Pulaski Skyway | photography | Holland Tunnel
