75 MPH Speed Limit On Garden State Parkway? 1,800 Want Change

LAKEWOOD, NJ — Mendel Rosenfeld says New Jersey is behind the times.

"What's it been, 10 years?" the Lakewood man said by phone this week as he spoke about the petition he started urging the state to raise the speed limit on the Garden State Parkway to 75 mph.

In petitioning Gov. Phil Murphy to change the speed limit, Rosenfeld contends it will help unemployment: "People will agree to travel further for a job, which will lower unemployment rates," he wrote.

Rosenfeld, who says he drives the Parkway a couple times a week, "sometimes a couple miles, sometimes a hundred," said he's heard a number of arguments against raising the speed limit since posting the petition on Change.org three days ago.

"People say the roads can't handle it, but people are already doing it and the roads are handling it just fine," Rosenfeld said.

As of Thursday afternoon, more than 1,800 people had signed Rosenfeld's petition.

"Most states have a maximum speed limit of 70 or 75 (mph)," Rosenfeld said. "New Jersey needs to get with the times."

Changing the speed limit on the Garden State Parkway to 75 would be a significant jump for some parts of the highway. Much of the Parkway is 65 mph but there are portions where the speed limit is 55, including between mileposts 123.5 and 163.3 (roughly South Amboy to Paramus) and from milepost 80 to 85.2 (South Toms River to the north end of Toms River).

The speed limit is 45 mph on the southbound side approaching the Driscoll Bridge over the Raritan River, and also 45 mph crossing the Great Egg Harbor Bridge.

Raising the speed limit on the state's highways has been debated since it was raised to 65 about 10 years ago. In 2013, Monmouth County Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon appeared to suggest in a radio interview that he supported increasing the speed limit — remarks he later said were taken out of context, according to NJ.com.

Supporters of maintaining lower speed limits contend that fatalities rise as speed increases because in a crash, there's more force at greater speeds. A 2016 article by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said there were 33,000 deaths attributable to the increase in speed limits over the 20 years from 1993, five years after federal speed limit rules were relaxed, to 2013. The federal law on speed limits was repealed in 1995, and since then states have increased speed limits, particularly on more rural interstates.

Rosenfeld contends an increase in speed limits is needed because "Everyone's driving newer cars that can move faster."

"If you increase the speed limit and keep people out of the left lane who are going under 80, you can save half an hour if you travel the whole Parkway," he said.

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