The $18 toll booth detour that cost me 2 hours in Jersey traffic

I hit the Garden State Parkway at 4:30 PM and thought I'd outsmart the backup by taking a scenic route through some neighborhood, only to end up paying $18 in tolls and sitting behind a parade of school buses for 2 hours. Has anyone else ever blown their whole evening on a 'shortcut' that was anything but?

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shane_fisher371d ago

...and honestly that shortcut thing NEVER works out the way you picture it. I heard some traffic guy on the radio last week saying the GPS apps are so good now that any "secret" route you think you found, like a thousand other people already found it too. So you're just shifting the jam from the highway to some side street that's not built for it, plus you're adding tolls and stop signs. The school bus parade thing is the WORST though, that's like the universe mocking you for being clever. I did the same thing once in Connecticut trying to skip a bottleneck and ended up on a road that literally turned into dirt. Jersey traffic is a different beast, it's got this special way of making you feel dumb for even trying to beat it.