Exit 17 on the southbound side of the Garden State Parkway takes traffic to Sea Isle City.
Sea Isle City officials continue to express their frustration over what they say is the failure of the Garden State Parkway’s operating agency to respond to their requests to expand the interchange leading to the resort town.
For the past seven years, Sea Isle’s City Council has repeatedly called on the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to convert Exit 17 into a full, four-way interchange capable of handing the surge of traffic during the peak summer tourism season.
At a City Council meeting Tuesday, city officials once again complained that they have heard nothing from the Turnpike Authority about Exit 17.
In both 2017 and at its Sept. 24 meeting, Council approved resolutions formally urging the Turnpike Authority to convert the exit from its limited two-way configuration into a four-way interchange.
Councilman Jack Gibson, who has been spearheading the effort to expand Exit 17, said there has still been no word yet from the authority in response to Sea Isle’s resolutions.
“It’s going to take efforts from all of us to follow through,” Gibson said of the city’s ongoing lobbying efforts to have Exit 17 expanded.
Gibson has noted that Exit 17 turns into a bottleneck when heavy southbound traffic gets backed up on the Garden State Parkway heading into Sea Isle during the busy summer tourism season.
The City Council resolution says that the construction of a full interchange “will greatly add to the safety of the traveling public on Sea Isle Boulevard and the Garden State Parkway.”
The New Jersey Turnpike Authority proposed turning Exit 17 into a full interchange as one of many projects included in the agency’s $24 billion capital plan released in 2020.
A full interchange would fill in the “missing movements” at Exit 17 between the Parkway and Sea Isle Boulevard, the main artery in and out of town, according to a description of the project.
Turnpike Authority spokesman Tom Feeney said the $24 billion capital plan is a long-term list of projects spread out over the next 20-plus years. It is not a list of projects going immediately to construction.
Every year, a rolling five-year plan is adopted by the Turnpike Authority’s board. The five-year plan shows which projects from the long-range plan are likely to go to design or construction over the next five years. The Exit 17 project is not in the current five-year program covering 2024 to 2028, Feeney said.
The 2025-2029 construction program will be presented to the board with the 2025 annual budget. It is not yet known whether Exit 17 will be included in the 2025-2029 program.
Northbound access to the Garden State Parkway off Sea Isle Boulevard is gained by using a separate on-ramp.Sea Isle Mayor Leonard Desiderio said the Turnpike Authority wants to add six new toll plazas on the Garden State Parkway through Cape May County as part of the plans to build new interchanges, including Exit 17.
“We’ve been battling that for years. Of course, we don’t want tolls,” Desiderio during Tuesday’s Council meeting.
Exit 17 currently has no toll to use it. According to the description of the project, Exit 17’s expansion would cost $20 million and would take 27 months to plan and design and another 18 months to build. It would require a series of county, state and federal environmental permits.
In its current configuration, the interchange is split into two parts. Exit 17’s off-ramp on the southbound side of the Parkway merges with Sea Isle Boulevard. For motorists wanting to access the Parkway’s northbound lanes, they must follow Sea Isle Boulevard out of town and then hop on a separate on-ramp.
However, there is no southbound access to the Parkway at Exit 17 off Sea Isle Boulevard. In addition, there is no exit to Sea Isle off the Parkway’s northbound side. Sea Isle lacks an off-ramp northbound at Exit 17.
To access Sea Isle off the Parkway’s northbound side, motorists must take Exit 13 into neighboring Avalon and then crawl along local roads. The trip through Avalon eventually leads to the Townsends Inlet Bridge, crossing over into Sea Isle’s southern tip.
One shortcut that is known by local motorists is to drive a little farther north on the Parkway and then make a U-turn at the nearby Ocean View service plaza. That gives them access to the Parkway’s southbound lanes and the Exit 17 off-ramp to Sea Isle.
Last year, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority completed $5 million in upgrades at the Ocean View plaza, including the construction of longer acceleration and deceleration lanes to make it safer for motorists entering and leaving the service area.
With the construction now finished, Desiderio wants the Turnpike Authority to formally name a small, landscaped memorial located at the Ocean View service plaza in honor of Cape May County’s military veterans. He said the authority has not responded to his request to do that.
Currently, there is a plaque at the base of the memorial that reads, “This monument is Dedicated to the Men and Women of Our Armed Forces … Past, Present, and Future.”
The Ocean View service plaza includes a small memorial that Sea Isle Mayor Leonard Desiderio wants named in honor of Cape May County veterans.
