New England Thruway

[Rothman]

The Connecticut Turnpike may have too many exits (subject to interpretation), but I don't see any of them going away anytime soon. Maybe any comments on the CT's exits should be in the Connecticut News thread.

The Connecticut Turnpike might have benefited from an I-295/NJ Turnpike situation in South Jersey, where you have limited exits on the CT Turnpike but have a free freeway alternative to deal with the local traffic. The only problem is South Western CT is much more dense then South Jersey and you dont have much room. You have the Merritt parkway slightly to the north but that doesn't really help much as trucks aren't allowed and it's only 4 lanes wide with antiquated interchanges.

The New England Thruway works well because of the limited exits, but is also kind of saved by the Hutch. The Hutch pulls too much weight in the Metro and while you have a free flowing NET, the Hutch is almost always at a standstill during rush hour including the NET and Hutch interchange in Co-op city.

The New England Thruway design is great as the limited exits make it very smooth, especially compared to the CT Turnpike.
The CT Turnpike is quite possible one of the worst designed roads in the country, and needlessly.
The New England Thruway goes through the Bronx, much more dense than SW CT which also has the Merritt Parkway to help with local traffic.  It is such a poor design in contrast, if they can do limited exits in the Bronx then we do not need 47 exits to New Haven.

I dunno.  The fact that the exits matched up pretty will with the miles so conversion was unnecessary is actually handy.  The stretch through Stamford is awful, though.

[TheDon102]

The Connecticut Turnpike may have too many exits (subject to interpretation), but I don't see any of them going away anytime soon. Maybe any comments on the CT's exits should be in the Connecticut News thread.

The Connecticut Turnpike might have benefited from an I-295/NJ Turnpike situation in South Jersey, where you have limited exits on the CT Turnpike but have a free freeway alternative to deal with the local traffic. The only problem is South Western CT is much more dense then South Jersey and you dont have much room. You have the Merritt parkway slightly to the north but that doesn't really help much as trucks aren't allowed and it's only 4 lanes wide with antiquated interchanges.

The New England Thruway works well because of the limited exits, but is also kind of saved by the Hutch. The Hutch pulls too much weight in the Metro and while you have a free flowing NET, the Hutch is almost always at a standstill during rush hour including the NET and Hutch interchange in Co-op city.

The New England Thruway design is great as the limited exits make it very smooth, especially compared to the CT Turnpike.
The CT Turnpike is quite possible one of the worst designed roads in the country, and needlessly.
The New England Thruway goes through the Bronx, much more dense than SW CT which also has the Merritt Parkway to help with local traffic.  It is such a poor design in contrast, if they can do limited exits in the Bronx then we do not need 47 exits to New Haven.

Regarding the designs, the New England Thruway has a lot of incomplete interchanges, the left shoulder is only around ~ 4 feet wide the entire length where as the CT Turnpike is 10-12 feet, and yes the NET in the Bronx often does get congested near the interchange with the Hutch and Pelham Parkway. The NET is a nice road, but it also suffers the same design issues as other 1950s era interstates.