LINDEN...THEN AND NOW
LINDEN...THEN AND NOW In recent weeks, we looked at the many changes made to the New Jersey highway systems back in the 1920's when the Holland Tunnel was first built. We looked at the Pulaski Skyway and the Elizabeth River Viaduct, but another change implemented even closer to home and just beyond the Linden border, was Elizabeth's Bayway Circle. While the first traffic circle in the nation was Manhattan's Columbus Circle laid out in 1905, New Jersey pioneered the first highway traffic circle some twenty years later with a successful design in the Pennsauken/Camden area. Just a few years later came the Bayway Circle and Linden drivers have had to deal with it ever since. Over the decades, the Bayway Circle became difficult to navigate with the ever-increasing traffic growth in the highly industrialized corridor, especially with truck traffic. The problem became so bad that by the 1980's, the State decided to improve traffic flow by extending the highway directly thru ...