N.J. May Be Home To Longest Traffic Light In U.S. – Can You Guess How Long?

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longest-traffic-lightThey say patience is a virtue, but some New Jersey drivers are finding they need a lot of both to deal with an intersection that some say has the longest traffic light in the country. 

In the small town of West Milford, you will find a place where time stands still.

“Oh it’s unbelievable. We wait forever,” said Irene Grimsby of Ringwood, N.J.

It might very well be the longest traffic light in America.

“You just sit and you wait and you wait and you wait,” another driver said.

It’s a place where you can be stuck for five minutes behind the wheel before finally making it through a double intersection.

At Clinton Road and Rt. 23 you will find it … or actually them – a pair of traffic lights about 400 feet apart that are driving motorists crazy.

“(It’s) stupid to me,” one driver said.

Get caught behind the first one and you’ll be waiting two and a half minutes, and when the light turns green you could have as little as seven seconds to make it through the next one, about 400 feet away.

“It’s a pain in the neck,” Grimsby said.

If you miss that it’s another two and a half minute wait.

“Forever,” a driver said.

That’s five minutes total, enough time to drink a cup of coffee, get your car washed or floss or brushes your teeth.

“This light is like the longest light in the world,” said Roger Ricciardelli of Vernon.

It has been this way for 10 years. The question is why?

Tim Greeley, a spokesperson for New Jersey Department of Transportation, said ironically: “… the timing is necessary to avoid unacceptable levels of congestion on the heavily traveled Rt. 23.”

Meaning that at what some call the world’s longest traffic light the times they ain’t a changin’.

The spokesperson for DOT also said there are no planned changes at the intersections.

{WCBS-TV/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}


5 COMMENTS

  1. I think it’s a sad commentary on our harried lifestyles that a 5 minute wait is portrayed as veritable torture; as well as a mussar haskel.

  2. Making people wait for no legitimate reason is exactly why we took out two Sifrei Torah last Shabbos – so as not to make the people wait the two or three minutes to be golel from Parshas Korach to Parshas Pinchas.
    (As a side note – all those cars idling for so long can’t be good for the enviornment…)

  3. There’s a 3 minute traffic light in Brooklyn at Flatbush Avenue past Kings Plaza. Motorists go to great lenghts to circumnavigate the area to avoid sitting there for that long!

  4. I sit every day for twenty minutes on Rt 9 in Lakewood as traffic slowly crawls from Prospect to Central On my way to first seder.

    I just grin and bear it.

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