Another faulty toll-hike plan

The N.J. Turnpike Authority has gone back to the drawing board again and has come back with yet another plan to raise toll revenue to pay for infrastructure improvements.

The plan, outlined in a letter from Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri to Gov. Jon Corzine yesterday, is pretty straightforward — tolls would be increased by about 42 percent on the turnpike and 43 percent on the parkway in December and 53 percent on the turnpike and 50 percent on the parkway in 2012, not taking into account discounts for off-peak use, fuel-efficient vehicles and senior drivers. (For instance, a driver getting on at Exit 8A and heading to 13A — the Newark Airport — now pays $2.20 for E-Zpass during peak hours; with the increase, the same trip would cost $2.55.)

Kolluri’s letter says that the toll hikes would fund a $7 billion, 10-year capital plan, along with a $1.25 billion contribution to the Transportation Trust Fund Authority for a new mass-transit tunnel under the Hudson River, linking New Jersey and the Penn Station in New York. The capital plan would include widening of both roads, bridge replacement and other projects.

It is the third — I think — time that a toll hike has been put on the table, either by the governor or the authority, and while the latest proposal would be less burdensome than previous plans, it still is badly flawed.

As we’ll point out in an editorial tomorrow, the Republicans are opposing it because they say it will be an added expense that could further hurt the economy. They also question the constitutionality of using toll revenue for the tunnel project.

Zoe Baldwin, of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which opposes the toll hikes, told me in an e-mail today that the organization stands by its September testimony during which it questioned the need for the two largest capital items — the widening of the turnpike and parkway — and raised concerns about the impact that the toll plan would have on other infrastructure needs.

“The new capital plan still asks taxpayers to pay for billions dollars of unnecessary road expansion at a time when fiscal responsibility is most needed,” she said.

In a follow-up e-mail, she added, that the reduced scope of the parkway expansion still made little sense.

“In reference to the Parkway, half of a bad project is still a bad project,” she wrote. “Overall, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority needs to be able to prove, with numbers, why they are proceeding with a given project. To this date, they have not empirically shown that the additional lanes will alleviate congestion.”

Kate Slevin, executive director of the campaign, told the Turnpike Authority in September that the organizatiojn “has two serious problems with the toll hike proposal.”

First, we worry that action taken now to dramatically increase tolls for NJ Turnpike Authority projects could undermine future action necessary to replenish the state’s Transportation Trust Fund, which will run dry in 2011. Starting then, the Trust Fund will require a substantial infusion of money to pay for bridge repair, road maintenance, intermodal programs, transit projects, and biking and walking programs across the state. We understand that the Turnpike Authority’s bond covenant requires a toll increase to cover next year’s expenses and debt service obligations, but we believe a 10 year, 9.7 billion dollar capital program is too ambitious less than 2 years before the Transportation Trust Fund runs dry. The more tolls are increased today to pay for Turnpike capital projects, the less receptive elected officials and the public will be to increasing other transportation fees to pay for replenishment of the Transportation Trust Fund, and the Fund must be our priority.

Second, a case has not been made for the Turnpike and Parkway widenings, which under the best case scenario, will cost a whopping $3.3 billion to build, or, about one third of the 9.7 billion dollar capital program NJTA is discussing today. There is no evidence that these projects, as designed, will relieve congestion in the long run, and both run counter to state goals to curb greenhouse gases. Therefore, they are not smart investments.

The projects won’t relieve congestion because studies have shown that absent of demand management strategies, wider roads simply fill with more traffic. In fact, traffic projections released by the NJ Turnpike Authority show that the section of the Garden State Parkway the Authority proposes to widen will be as or more congested by 2025 with three lanes as it is today. NJ Turnpike Authority documents also show that the widened Turnpike will quickly fill its added capacity. It’s 2008, we need more innovative and effective solutions to traffic jams.

And we have them. There are much effective, not to mention cheaper, alternatives to manage traffic, such as congestion pricing, high occupancy toll lanes, mass transit, or, better freight management. However, none of these have been adequately studied for the Parkway or Turnpike. Shouldn’t the state study all possible alternatives and prove that these projects adequately reduce traffic congestion before we ask drivers to pay for these projects? We estimate that removing the Turnpike and Parkway widening projects from this program could reduce the toll hikes by about a third and give the state time to find more effective ways to manage congestion.

Further undermining the Turnpike expansion project is recent data from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority which shows that driving on the road has been much lower than the NJTA anticipated when it conceived the project. From April 2005 to April 2008, the number of vehicles using all seven New Jersey Turnpike entries in the project area (Exits 6, 6A, 7, 7A, 8, 8A, 9) stagnated. Between 2002 and 2007, average annual traffic growth was just .7%. The most recent annual data shows traffic on the roadway actually declined 1.1% between 2006 and 2007. This blows to pieces the NJTA’s whole foundation for expanding the roadway which, and I quote, is to “service existing and projected future traffic demand on the Turnpike mainline.” That foundation relies on pre-2002 data, when traffic growth rates were much higher, at 2.6% annually. Traffic growth rates are not what they were when this project was conceived.

I’m not sure we can avoid a toll hike, but the plan on the table is a bad one that could have longterm ramifications, making it more difficult to do what needs to be done on other local and state roads.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet