(The following story by Larry Higgs appeared on the Asbury Park Press website on May 8.)
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — The state Department of Transportation’s $3.3 billion capital plan of major road, bridge and mass transit projects got good marks from an advocacy group for continuing to spend about 44 percent to fix deteriorated roads and bridges first.
A report released Wednesday by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a watchdog group, is concerned that increased future spending for road-widening projects will come at the expense of fixing existing highways and bridges. The report named local projects to widen Halls Mills Road in Freehold and the Route 9 corridor between Lakewood and Toms River and the Sayreville Main Street bypass as examples of those expansion projects.
Tri-States’ analysis found that 1.5 percent of the total capital program went to expansion projects. But by 2011, the percentage for highway expansion grows to nearly 8 percent.
“Widening doesn’t alleviate congestion,” said Zoe Baldwin, Tri-State New Jersey coordinator. “Unless there are other alternatives explored by DOT, we are throwing our money away.”
In the report, Tri-State expresses concern that increased funding for widening will undermine fix-it-first projects, noting that the Federal Highway Administration has ranked state roads as the second worst in the nation. The report estimates that expansion funding could reach $150 million by 2011.
One alternative, the NJ Future In Transportation program, also has seen projects slip out and resurface as widening proposals, including the Route 9 corridor in Toms River. That program looks at using “smart growth” land-use policies along highway corridors, in conjunction with infrastructure improvements to relieve congestion.
“We were specific to point out that the FY 2009 program was in the limits. It’s the outer years that raises our reservations,” Baldwin said about road expansion. “We want the state to spend the few transportation dollars it has in the right place.”
Tri-State also is concerned that those wider roads and highways will cost more money to maintain, she said.
Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri countered that two of the projects, expansion of Routes 1 and 17, involve two of the most congested highways in the state and that road widening is capped.
“We’ve capped expansion to 4 percent capacity as we have for the past years,” Kolluri said. “Route 17 and Route 1 are probably the most-traveled roads and congested roads in the state, and this provides relief.”
Those projects are critical to move people and keep the economy stable, and conform with the fix-it-first program, he said.
The report also criticized projects that widen roads, but aren’t listed as expansion, including widening Halls Mill Road in Freehold to four lanes and more lanes for the Main Street Bypass in Sayreville.
The largest is a projected $282 million to widen Route 17 to six lanes between 2011 and 2015, the report said. The DOT plan doesn’t include the proposed New Jersey Turnpike or Garden State Parkway widenings, which are in the Turnpike Authority budget.
Widening alternatives for large highways such as the Parkway and Turnpike include the use of High Occupancy Toll lanes, which charge drivers to use the less-traveled lane, Baldwin said.
Kolluri said that smart-growth criteria are being applied to many projects, not just those under the NJFIT label. He added that the capital plan also increases funding for mass transit, which relieves highway congestion.