Atlantic City Expressway Connector

Marker is located at the Northwest corner of Mississippi and Fairmount Avenues

Marker text:
South Jersey Transportation Authority
Atlantic City Expressway Connector
Donald T. DiFrancesco, Acting Governor
Commissioners
Stanley R. Glassey, Chairman
Charles J. DePalma - Vice Chairman
Carl W. Block
James M. Dwyer
Charles E. Owens
Louis Toscano
James Washington
James Weinstein, NJDOT
Charles Hance, NJC
James A. Crawford, Executive Director
Kathleen C. Aufschneider, Chief Engineer
July 27, 2001

Additional information:

Although casinos existed in Atlantic City’s Marina district as far back as 1980, no direct highway route to this area was created until two decades later. Until then, tourists would either have to get off of the Expressway and drive through the entire downtown section of the city, or take Absecon Boulevard, a less-familiar route for those travelers from out of the area. In the mid-90s, the proposal of a new casino to complement the existing two in the district generated talks of building a more direct route to the Marina. A tunnel connecting the Atlantic City Expressway with the Marina district and Brigantine was proposed, but the plan didn’t commence without opposition. Many local residents feared that the tunnel’s construction would destroy their neighborhoods, while casino owners argued that the tunnel would simply serve as a “private driveway” to direct patrons to their competitors’ resorts. When the main casino project supporting the tunnel construction was abandoned, however, the route was changed to provide more general access to the casinos in the marina, area roads, and Brigantine. After five years of planning and two and a half years of construction, the 2.3-mile long Atlantic City Expressway Connector Tunnel opened in July 2001. Within a year the route, which reduced travel time from the Expressway to Brigantine to only four minutes, was carrying 20,000 vehicles a day during peak season.