Interstate 78 (I-78): Route to the Holland Tunnel, Tolls and Crash Record

How long is I-78?

FHWA's Route Log gives I-78 146.24 miles as of January 2026: 77.50 in Pennsylvania, 67.84 in New Jersey and 0.90 in New York. Of the 66 main Interstates in the Route Log, 17 are shorter.

Wikipedia and Interstate Guide print a table that totals 146.28 miles, with 77.95 in Pennsylvania and 0.50 in New York; Interstate Guide credits a December 2021 edition of the Route Log. Wikipedia's opening line still says 144 miles. I-78 shares pavement with US 22 and PA 309 in Pennsylvania and with US 22 again in western New Jersey, but those are not Interstates, so the Route Log carries no overlap note for I-78 and the crash rates on this page use the plain state rows.

Where I-78 starts and ends

The western end is a directional T interchange with I-81 in Union Township, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles northeast of Harrisburg near Lickdale. The eastern end is Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, where traffic comes up out of the Holland Tunnel. Vehicles carrying hazardous goods are barred from the tunnel.

US 22 joins at exit 8 near Fredericksburg and stays on I-78 for 43 miles through Berks and Lehigh counties, leaving at exit 51 in Upper Macungie Township. PA 309 then rides along from exit 53 to exit 60 on six lanes that pass south of Allentown. The road runs along South Mountain and Morgan Hill, bypassing Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton to the south, crosses the Delaware River on the I-78 Toll Bridge into Phillipsburg, and picks up US 22 for another 15 miles to exit 18 at Annandale.

New Jersey calls its section from Phillipsburg to Newark the Phillipsburg-Newark Expressway, formally the Lightning Division Memorial Highway. From Route 24 through Union Township, Hillside and Newark the road splits into local and express lanes. Past the Newark Airport interchange, I-78 becomes the Newark Bay Extension of the New Jersey Turnpike, crosses the Newark Bay Bridge into Bayonne and Jersey City, and drops onto a one-way pair of surface streets, 12th Street eastbound and 14th Street westbound, with four traffic signals before the tunnel.

Interstate junctions along I-78

Read west to east, the list starts with I-81 at the western end and closes with I-95, the New Jersey Turnpike, in Newark, just past the first toll plaza on the Newark Bay Extension. Near Allentown, eastbound drivers reach the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Northeast Extension (I-476) through exit 51 instead of a direct ramp. In New Jersey, I-78 also meets I-287 at exit 29 in Bedminster and the Garden State Parkway at exit 52 in Union Township.

Fatal crashes on I-78

From 2020 to 2024, 74 fatal crashes on the I-78 main line killed 84 people, about 17 a year. That comes to 11.5 deaths per 100 route miles a year. The average across the Interstate network is 9.5, and I-78 places 14th of 56 ranked routes, where 1 is the highest rate. Deaths went from 18 in 2020 to 22 in 2021, dropped to 14 and then 11, and rose to 19 in 2024.

New Jersey's 67.84 miles account for 49 deaths and a rate of 14.4, about half again the network figure. Pennsylvania's rate is 9.0 on 35 deaths, a little under the average. The 0.90 miles in New York recorded no deaths and are too short for a rate. Berks and Lehigh counties in Pennsylvania lead the county list with 16 deaths each, followed by Somerset and Essex in New Jersey with 12 each and Union with 10.

Counties with the most I-78 crash deaths

Bridges on I-78

The 2025 National Bridge Inventory has 216 bridges carrying the I-78 main line, with a median build year of 1967. Ten rate Poor, about 4.6 percent, while 27 are Good and 179 Fair. New Jersey holds 127 of the bridges on fewer miles than Pennsylvania, and nine of the ten Poor ones. Pennsylvania's 89 bridges include one rated Poor.

The I-78 Toll Bridge over the Delaware River opened on November 21, 1989. It is a 1,222-foot concrete structure of seven spans carrying six lanes. In the Watchung Reservation, the Nikesite Road overpass was built with extra land on it, and a separate raised crossing lets animals get over the highway.

Tolls on I-78

FHWA's January 2023 inventory lists three toll facilities on I-78. The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission runs the I-78 Toll Bridge, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority runs the Newark Bay Extension, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey runs the Holland Tunnel. The bridge charges only westbound traffic heading into Pennsylvania: $2.00 for a car with E-ZPass and $5.00 by toll-by-plate, under the commission's 2026 schedule starting in January 2026. Eastbound toward Manhattan the river crossing is free, and the Turnpike Authority and the Port Authority set their own tolls for the extension and the tunnel.

The mileage column is FHWA's length for each facility, and it can run well past the tolled part: 6.62 miles for the toll bridge, which is 1,222 feet long, and 8.45 miles for the Newark Bay Extension, which Wikipedia puts at 8.2. None of our sources mention express or priced lanes opening on I-78 since 2023. The Turnpike Authority's plan to widen the extension between I-95 and Jersey City grew from $4.7 billion to $10.6 billion by late 2022, and in December 2025 Governor Phil Murphy canceled the part east of exit 14A in Bayonne.

I-78 auxiliary routes

All four three-digit routes from I-78 are in and around New York City, though the parent route spends less than a mile in New York State. I-278 is the longest at 35.61 miles: 1.99 in New Jersey at Elizabeth and 33.62 through Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I-678 covers 14.67 miles in Queens and the Bronx, I-478 runs 2.40 miles between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and I-878 is a 0.70-mile piece of the Nassau Expressway near JFK Airport. Pennsylvania has none today. PA 378, a spur into Bethlehem, carried the I-378 number until I-78 moved to its southern alignment, and a planned I-178 into Allentown was dropped after local opposition.

How I-78 came together, and why it stops in Manhattan

The oldest piece is the Holland Tunnel, open since November 13, 1927. The Newark Bay Extension followed, built from 1954 and opened in September 1956 as the first limited-access part of I-78 in New Jersey. The I-78 number dates from 1957.

In Pennsylvania, I-78 grew out of US 22. US 22 became an expressway from the Lebanon County line to exit 13 in 1950 and reached exit 17 in 1951. The Lehigh Valley Thruway was built from 1952 to 1955, and all of I-78 west of the Thruway was finished by 1970. Opposition in Phillipsburg stopped the planned link from the Thruway into New Jersey in 1968. Crews broke ground on a new alignment south of Allentown and Bethlehem in 1984, and it opened, with the toll bridge, on November 21, 1989.

New Jersey's last gap ran through the Watchung Reservation in Union County. The freeway from Martinsville Road (exit 33) to Drift Road (exit 41) was done in 1974, but the stretch on to Route 24 (exit 48) waited on disputes over its effect on the reservation. Planners moved it closer to the reservation's northern edge, cut into Second Watchung Mountain, and used a jersey barrier in place of a grass median to keep the footprint narrow. That section opened in August 1986.

East of the Holland Tunnel, I-78 was supposed to cross Manhattan on the Lower Manhattan Expressway to the Williamsburg Bridge and continue through Brooklyn on the Bushwick Expressway. Both were canceled. On June 23, 1969, AASHTO deleted I-78 between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Nassau Expressway, which became I-878, and the canceled Lower Manhattan Expressway left Canal Street as the end. In 2025, USDOT gave the Port Authority a $25 million grant to narrow 12th Street, the eastbound approach to the tunnel, between Jersey Avenue and Marin Boulevard.

I-78 traffic and road conditions

Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York each post I-78 closures, crashes and roadwork on their own 511 service, linked below. Our crash figures stop at the end of 2024, so they won't show a wreck from this morning.

I-78 questions