(The following article by Joe Malinconico was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on September 12.)
NEWARK, N.J. — Even as state officials struggle to find money for next year’s road and mass transit projects, a powerful transportation authority has signed off on a plan to spend $81 billion over the next 25 years.
The North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, which oversees the use of federal funds in the state’s 13 northern counties, adopted an ambitious blueprint yesterday extending to the year 2030.
Hundreds of bridges would be repaired. Tens of thousands of miles of roads would be repaved. More than 100 congestion troublespots would be resolved. Billions of dollars worth of mass transit projects would be built.
But authority Chairman Peter Palmer said the plan could be knocked off track unless state officials come up with the money through taxes or other means.
“New Jersey is not struggling economically, we’re the richest state in the country,” said Palmer, who is also a Somerset County freeholder. “We can afford to do these things if we come to that decision politically.”
“When you spend money on transportation, you get a return on that investment,” he said.
The biggest project on the authority’s wish list is the proposed $6 billion commuter rail tunnel to Midtown Manhattan. Yesterday, the authority gave its endorsement to NJ Transit’s plan for connecting the tunnel to a new station that would be built below 34th Street, between 6th and 8th avenues.
That route has come under fire from some rail watchdog groups who maintain the tunnel ought to provide a connection to Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan’s East Side, where many commuters from New Jersey work.
But transportation officials said digging the tunnel all the way to the East Side — an option that does not have support from key New York officials — would be too expensive and drag out the project way beyond its current target date of 2015.
Many of the other rail projects on the long-range plan adopted yesterday depend on the completion of the tunnel to provide more capacity for trains between New Jersey and Manhattan.
Under the plan, more than half the money — or $45 billion — would be spent on new transit projects and on repairing the existing rail and bus systems. Another $16.7 billion would be spent on preserving the existing highway system, $12.4 billion would be spent for bridges, $1.5 billion for new roads and $5.4 billion for other things, including freight rail projects, safety initiatives, bicycle and pedestrian programs.
The planning authority is counting on a modest 25 percent increase in federal transportation funding over the next 25 years and a substantial 85 percent jump in the money provided by the state government.
The next 10 months will provide a clear indication of whether those expectations are realistic. By July 1, almost all of the $805 million in taxes earmarked for New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund — the program that pays for big ticket highway and mass transit projects — will be needed to cover debt payments.
Over the last several years, attempts to replenish the trust fund by raising the gasoline tax have failed. Neither candidate for governor has embraced an increase in the gas tax.
Democrat Jon Corzine says the state could solve the trust fund problem by selling off assets, like the New Jersey Turnpike. Republican Doug Forrester, meanwhile, says the state needs to cut wasteful spending.
“It’s a political football,” said John Hibbs, president and business manager of Heavy Construction Laborers Local 472 in Newark, which has 8,500 members. “Every year they say wait until lame duck and we’ll get it done and every year nothing happens. If this doesn’t get done, we’re not talking about a recession, we’re talking about a depression.”