Oh thank heaven.

The greatest, grandest, grittiest sight in Jersey is staying upright after all.

The Skyway lives, and apparently will live well after all of us depart the seventh circle of motoring hell known as North Jersey.

A true Jerseyan never calls the Pulaski Skyway by its full name; it’s just the Skyway.

There’s nothing on earth quite like it; the Chicago Skyway, twice as long, is Pulaski Skyway Lite.

Our Skyway is three and a half miles of pure chaos or charm, depending on whether you regard a bridge with non-existent shoulders and no practical speed limit arcing over a blasted landscape something worthy of nightmares, or nirvana.

I will always and forever be in the latter camp.

Pulaski Skyway to close for two years starting in 2014 10 Gallery: Pulaski Skyway to close for two years starting in 2014

There was talk five years ago of the Skyway being torn down. Too old, decrepit, dangerous, ugly.

I never got the ugly part because the Skyway is the most wondrous man-made sight in Jersey. Bayway, especially lit up at night, is a close second, but the Skyway beats it in sheer brazenness.

Jet-black in color, it snakes and slithers across a shadowy world of warehouses (including one filled with five million bottles of booze), bustling container ship depots, belching smokestacks, truck stops, train tracks, power lines, bars, one jail and one sewage treatment plant.

That’s South Kearny, an endlessly fascinating world of truckers and tough guys and who knows how many bodies buried there over the years. Don’t forget: Jimmy Hoffa is supposed to be buried under the Skyway. I never believed the Meadowlands; too easy, too obvious.

When the bridge was completed in 1932, the then-chief of the Federal Bureau of Roads described it as "the greatest highway project in the United States today.’’ Someone else called the Skyway "the most beautiful bridge in the world.’’

It’s even more beautiful - or at least more arresting - today. The Golden Gate Bridge and Mackinac Bridge and the Sunshine Skyway Bridge down in Florida may be more magnificent, but none tops the Skyway for sheer twisted chutzpah.

The bridge is named, of course, after Casimir Pulaski, the Revolutionary War hero. That the 3.5-mile bridge is named after the Father of the American Cavalry is fitting; you do not so much drive the Skyway as charge across it, 45 mile-an-hour speed limit be damned.

No one does 45 miles an hour on the Skyway, unless the traffic is stopped dead. Which may happen more than usual starting next February, as the two northbound lanes will be closed as part of an eight-year, $1 billion reconstruction project.

Five years ago, there was talk about the state tearing the bridge down. Goodbye Skyway. There were lamentations from incurably romantic and impossibly jaded types like me. No, tear down the GW or the Ben Franklin, but not the Skyway. It’s uniquely, undeniably Jersey. On my dream Jersey calendar, I’d want the Skyway, not some saccharine, could-be-anywhere sweep of rolling countryside.

Turnpike traffic streams under the Skyway in this New Jersey Turnpike Authority archive photo.

There was a drive-in down there once, at the Newark end. Scenes from the 1979 movie "Hair’’ were shot on the Skyway. The bridge everyone loves to hate was "rediscovered’’ when it was featured in the opening credit scenes of "The Sopranos.’’

The bridge - 135 feet high, no trucks allowed since 1934 - has long exerted a mythic pull on the Jersey, even nationwide, imagination. In Orson Welles’ classic "War of the Worlds’’ broadcast in 1938, a "gigantic creature’’ straddled the Skyway. The broadcast caused panic in the streets; Welles brilliantly tapped into the pre-war anxiety gripping the nation.

But murderous Martians and shifting political landscapes and budget-cutting couldn’t kill the Skyway. It lives on, a rude beast slouching towards Newark or Jersey City, depending on which way you’re going.

The reconstruction project may seem the end of the world to those who depend on the Skyway to get to work every day. Northbound drivers will be forced to seek an "alternate route’’ - talk about a classic Jerseyism - but an extra lane of the Turnpike Extension (I-78) will be open. Officials say the reconstruction project will extend the Skyway’s shelf life another 75 years.

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The news of the project earlier this week made me want to drive out on the Skyway and celebrate by - well, not getting into an accident, for one. Those who stop or hesitate up there risk life and limb. Keep both hands on the wheel - you’d be crazy to talk on your cell while Skyway-bound - and foot firmly pressed on the gas.

Three-and-a-half miles across two rivers and three towns. Forget roller coasters and Ferris wheels and bungee jumps; it’s Jersey’s greatest thrill attraction, a ride on the wild side, one that shows Jersey like no TV show or book or anything else ever could.

The Skyway lives, and will keep on going until year 2100 or so. If there weren’t so many other unplanned plots in the vicinity, I’d want to be buried under it.

Oh thank heaven for this gritty ride from hell, the state’s most beautiful man-made sight. Don’t worry Bayway, I love you, too. Just not as much.

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