Arctic Parkway may have been one of New Jersey’s first proposed bypasses to stumble out of the block in the automobile age, but it would not be the last. Lawrence, Hopewell and other neighboring municipalities, lying slap in the middle of the Philadelphia-New York corridor, were in the crosshairs of transportation planners from an early date. Over the decades, alternative alignments for two U.S. 206 bypasses, I-95 and I-295 have all been charted across the terrain, with I-295 the only one reaching completion during the 1970s.

From an early date, traffic counts showed volumes exceeding the capacity of the existing roads and congestion worsening. U.S. 206, which followed the colonial King’s Highway, and U.S. 1, which followed the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike of 1805, would never be up to the job. Slowdowns caused by local intersections and cars pulling into and out of driveways and parking lots were unavoidable on these old roads. Adding extra lanes upset adjacent property owners and only partially improved traffic flow.

Lack of funding, combined with the onset of the Great Depression, was probably the main reason for Mercer County dropping the rest of the project. Bergen Street came much later, in the 1980s, a result of a developer following a gently curving street alignment surveyed decades prior for Arctic Parkway.