(The following story by Tom Feeney appeared on the Newark Star-Ledger website on February 13.)
NEWARK, N.J. — The hundreds of millions of dollars New Jersey invests every year in mass transit provides a boost to the economy, a reduction in carbon emisions and some much-needed relief on the congested highways.
That’s the conclusion of a report on the benefits of mass transit released this week by the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers.
The report marshals conclusions from dozens of studies, polls and other published works to prove the value of public investments in mass transit. The study was published with funding from NJ Transit.
“Transit’s contributions to its community can be undervalued and not fully appreciated by policymakers and the public,” the report says.
The report comes at a time when the state is debating Gov. Jon Corzine’s plan to secure long-term funding for transportation projects and to pay down state debt by borrowing against future highway tolls. But the report does not mention Corzine’s plan and the timing of its release was incidental, said the author, Rick Remington.
Corzine’s proposal would provide money for highway, bridge and transit spending. The Voorhees report is concerned primarily with transit funding.
Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics show New Jersey highways had the highest traffic volume in the nation in 2005, the Voorhees report says. But New Jersey also ranks second behind New York and far above the national average in transit use.
New Jersey has been one of only two states in the nation to spend half or more of its transportation dollars on transit since 2000. It paid more than $702 million toward NJ Transit’s capital and operating expenses in 2005, according to the Vorhees report.
Without the wide use of transit, the highways would be much more crowded, the report says. It cites the 2007 Urban Mobility Report by the Texas Transportation Institute, which found the New York metropolitan area would have lost $4.1 billion in wasted time and fuel if there were no mass transit.
NJ Transit’s own research shows its train, bus and light rail service eliminated 2.56 billion miles of vehicle travel on New Jersey roads in 2006, saving 1.16 million tons in carbon emissions, the Voorhees report says.
“During the 1970s, when overall transportation spending lagged in New Jersey, the state’s per capita income declined to a rate that was 16 percent higher than the rest of the nation,” the report says, citing a 2005 Rutgers study. “But when transportation investment surged during the 1980s and 1990s, per capita income in New Jersey by 2003 rose to 28 percent higher than the rest of the nation as office construction and the economy grew.”