(The following story by Paul Nussbaum appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on March 7, 2010.)
PHILADELPHIA — In systemwide service cuts announced Friday, NJ Transit said it planned to eliminate six trains on its Philadelphia-Atlantic City line. That would be in addition to two trains cut in January.
This comes less than three months after NJ Transit announced it would spend $735,000 on a consultant to study ways to increase service on the Atlantic City line.
And it’s about four months after NJ Transit broke ground on a $40 million station to connect the Atlantic City line to the River Line, which runs between Trenton and Camden.
Less service? More service?
Even as bus and train riders fume about possible 25 percent fare hikes and widespread reductions in service, NJ Transit says it is planning for growth.
New executive director James Weinstein said the agency needed to invest in projects that would allow it to rebound when the economy did. Money spent on capital projects such as construction and new equipment does not come out of the operating budget, which faces a $300 million deficit next year, he said. “I need to make sure we keep building on the innovations and ideas of the people who came before me,” Weinstein said in an interview. “We need to keep moving the ball forward.”
But it’s clear that NJ Transit riders will pay more. And for now, at least, they’ll get less service.
Gov. Christie is struggling to address a $2.2 billion deficit in the state budget this year and as much as an $11 billion gap in the budget for the fiscal year that will start July 1.
“I think people are going to be very angry with us,” Weinstein said.
He’s right about that.
When riders at the Cherry Hill Mall bus stop heard Friday about the plan for fare hikes and service cuts, they tallied the cost in dollars and inconvenience.
“It’s time to get a driver’s license,” said Kelly Moulton, a 32-year-old Pennsauken resident who works at the Penneys department store at the mall. “I take the bus to and from home.”
Moulton said she thought she was “saving money and helping the environment” by taking public transportation. “But maybe it would be cheaper to drive,” she said as she sat in a shelter waiting for the No. 404 to Pennsauken.
Nearby, Justin Mateo, 19, of Maple Shade, calculated the impact of the proposed hikes while waiting for a bus to take him to his stock supervisor job at the Wal-Mart on Route 38 in Cherry Hill.
“It’s going to make people budget money even more,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
Frankie James, 54, of Camden, had just dropped his car off at the nearby Midas repair shop and was waiting for a bus home. “You pay more and get less,” said James, a truck driver. “That’s terrible.”
The increases will take effect May 1 if the NJ Transit board approves them. Public hearings on the proposals will be held this month at 11 sites statewide, and the changes could be altered as a result.
Much of the anger has been directed at Christie’s unwillingness to spread the pain to motorists by increasing the fuel tax or highway tolls.
“Raising fees on transit riders while avoiding raising fees on car or truck drivers is an unbalanced and inequitable way to fund our transportation network,” said Zoe Baldwin of the pro-transit Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “Transit fares have increased 68 percent over the past decade, far outpacing the increases for drivers.”
The advocacy group calculated a bus-dependent family of three would pay $414 more annually with the fare increases. By comparison, a 10-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax, currently 14.5 cents, would cost a typical household $93 a year, the group said.
New Jersey’s gas tax is the third-lowest in the nation, and many lawmakers, including some members of Christie’s Republican Party, have urged the governor to raise a tax that hasn’t been increased since 1988.
Christie has said higher gas taxes and increased tolls are not an option. “I respectfully disagree with the governor,” State Sen. Christopher Bateman (R., Somerset) said last week during confirmation hearings for Transportation Commissioner James Simpson.
“We need a stable source of funding, and most people can see a correlation between a user tax and the condition of our roads. . . . I hope you and the governor will take another look” at a higher gas tax, Bateman said.
The fare increases and service cuts would likely reduce transit ridership, already down 4 percent from its 2008 peak, and push more commuters onto congested highways. A 25 percent fare increase could be expected to reduce ridership by about 2.5 percent, Weinstein said. “Raising fares leads to a loss of ridership,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the state Sierra Club. “This downward spiral could dismantle one of the best transportation systems in the country.”
“Instead of hiking fares on working people in New Jersey,” he said, “they should take some money away from the ARC tunnel” – a rail tunnel that NJ Transit plans to build under the Hudson River to New York City – “or highway widenings and use that money to subsidize transit.” Weinstein said he hoped to have no further cuts so NJ Transit could turn its plans for growth into reality. “I don’t want to go through this excruciating process next year,” he said.