Stop in for a cup of coffee

The paved part certainly did not go so far into the shoulder, assuming it was paved.
I can't recall that road having a drainage ditch, but it might have. Used to be very common in North Jersey on the local roads. Paved shoulders were always minimal. But this one has been a part of US 46 for a long time. Just checked Wikipedia, which dates its it 1936, and this section had been called Rt 5 before that.
It is also entirely possible that the road bed was moved further away from the station in later years. It happened a lot when roads were rebuilt to give more room to the structures along the road and straighten the road path. In the earlier years, roads tended to be a lot closer to the structures and were more winded when the they had traffic speeds that were much slower.