Turnpike – Hank Kalet

What side are they on?

New Jersey politics makes little sense. Democrats are calling for a rollback of toll hikes, while the Republicans want the new tolls to fund the Transportation Trust Fund. When did the world flip upside down and Republicans suddenly supporter higher tolls?

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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.

Toll hikes back on the table

One thing you can’t say about Gov. Jon Corzine is that keeping his office is more important than his vision for the future.

The governor is proposing to hike tolls on the N.J. Turnpike and Garden State Parkway by 50 percent in 2009 — the year he is expected to seek re-election. That’s a gutsy move, consider how unpopular his earlier toll-hike plan was.

The governor’s plan, which is expected to be unveiled by the N.J. Turnpike Authority next week, would use the added cash for transportation upgrades.

If enacted, it would mean the cost of a typical 23-mile trip on the Turnpike would jump from $1.20 to $1.80 next year. It would rise to $2.70 in 2012 and reach $3 after 2023.

Tolls on the Garden State Parkway would rise at a similar pace. The current average of 35 cents per passenger car would rise to 50 cents next year, 75 cents in 2012 and reach 85 cents in 2023. The hikes would be the first since 2000 and would be used to widen the Turnpike and Parkway, invest $1.25 billion in a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River and repair and replace decrepit bridges.

The proposal will be a difficult one to sell, but it has support from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a nonpartisan transportation and environmental group that advocates for mass transit and using money to maintain existing infrastructure, which believes that it should be scaled down and the highway widenings eliminated. It says that the “plan ultimately falls short by including $3.3 billion for wasteful expansions of these two roads.”

“This plan recognizes that Access to the Region’s Core is essential to New Jersey’s economic vitality and will help reduce traffic congestion throughout the state,” said Kate Slevin, Executive Director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a regional policy watchdog organization. “But chaining it to wasteful, old-fashioned, and poorly planned road projects is the wrong move.”

The Turnpike Authority has not made the case that the Turnpike or the Parkway widening projects are needed. As currently designed, neither will provide long-term congestion relief. In fact, according to state data, parts of the new lane on the Parkway will be filled with traffic as soon as construction is complete. Alternatives like congestion pricing and cashless tolling have not been examined in the environmental documents, though they could provide long-term traffic relief at a fraction of the cost of highway expansion.

“Decades of road widening have shown that highway expansion doesn’t ease traffic congestion in the long run. New Jersey needs projects that look to the future, not the past,” said Slevin. Alternatively, the Campaign recommended a smaller toll increase to pay for necessary road maintenance and bridge repair and ensure that the ARC tunnel remains on track.

NJ Future also is backing the plan. A press release quoted NJ Future Executive Director Peter Kasabach, called “the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) tunnel project and continued improvement and expansion of our mass transit system toward sustaining and enhancing our state’s economy, environment and quality of life.”

We welcome the Turnpike Authority’s proposal to use new funding proceeds for both the Trans-Hudson tunnel project and funding for mass transit.

Fiscally, the proposal makes more sense than the earlier plan to borrow against tolls to pay debt, but I think in the end it asks Turnpike drivers to foot the bill for improvements that probably should be paid for by a larger swath of people — through a gas tax increase, through development fees, etc.

But as practical as this plan may be, the politics may trump things in the end. The Legislature plans hearings on it — though it is not directly under the Legislature’s control — and the governor will have to run his re-election campaign with the toll hikes fresh in voters’ minds.

One thing is for certain, though, the state needs to fix its infrastructure sooner rather than later. We don’t need to have another Minneapolis bridge collapse and, while the business lobby might claim otherwise, the business community is more likely to flee a state with aging and nonfunctional infrastructure than it is a state that has to ask its businesses to pay a little more in taxes.

Buying the farm

The state’s money troubles could have a severe impact on one of its most popular programs, according to a story today in The Star-Ledger.

The Garden State Preservation Trust, which finances the preservation of New Jersey’s open space and historic sites, yesterday detailed its recommendations for doling out $91 million in farmland preservation money for projects all over the state.

The allocations leave $120 million in the fund — $109 million for open space preservation and parkland development and $11 million for historic site preservation. When that money is given out by the end of this year, the trust will be out of money.

The state is looking to put a funding question on the 2009 ballot, but that will come too late to provide money for next year.

Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Gov. Jon Corzine, said the governor has stressed the need to protect open space throughout New Jersey. Corzine said on June 30 he expects to wait until fall before launching an effort to find more funding for the trust and indicated he wants to look at open space funding as part of the larger issue of funding public works and transportation projects and reducing state debt.

Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), chairman of the upper house’s Environment Committee, said a poll taken by environmental activists in May and June showed more than 60 percent of potential voters support funding open space, either through an $800 million bond issue, a 40 cents per 1,000 gallons of water user fee to raise $150 million annually, or by dedicating sales tax revenue. Smith said it would take a special session of the Legislature to get either proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot.

“The sad part is that if we wait until 2009 for a ballot question the program will have come to a halt,” Smith said. “That would be a shame because now is the time to be buying open space. The state could really get land at a bargain right now.”

And, as anyone who lives in Central Jersey knows, open space and farmland preservation are among the few avenues we have to control sprawl and limit growth.

On a side note, the governor continues to link the fund to transportation projects and debt, meaning he is likely to put another version of the Turnpike plan on the table. That would be a mistake that could imperil both open space and infrastructure programs.

Let’s just be honest with everyone and raise the money openly. One way or another, we’re going to have to pay.

Toll roads to ruin

On Thursday, we reported that local mayors were concerned that the governor’s toll plan likely would push cars from the Turnpike to local roads — in particular, Routes 1 and 130.

Yesterday, the governor released the consultant’s report it used to craft the plan — a report that appears to back the mayor’s contention. According to The Star-Ledger, which offers a nice summary for those who do not want to slog through the entire report (parts I, II, III and IV),

The report forecasts that between 20 percent and 30 percent of traffic on the Turnpike, the Atlantic City Expressway and Route 440 and between 10 percent and 20 percent of the traffic on the Garden State Parkway would turn to other roads, mass transit or freight rail if the Legislature adopts Corzine’s plan to raise tolls four times by 50 percent plus inflation by 2022. Even with the decrease in traffic, the report forecasts huge increases in revenue if Corzine’s toll plan is adopted.

Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri said yesterday the Corzine administration maintains far fewer cars and trucks will leave the toll roads than the report predicts.

For instance, after Turnpike tolls went up by 70 percent for passenger vehicles and 100 percent for trucks in 1991, the volume of passenger vehicles on the Turnpike fell by 5.5 percent and the volume of commercial vehicles fell by 10 percent, according to a memo from Turnpike Authority Executive Director Michael Lapolla. Traffic volumes returned to pre-toll-hike levels within five years.

Not what people in this area need to hear.

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