Massachussetts and FLA are just as bad!
On rt95 and rt93 you have to avoid the potholes at 70 miles an hour.
July 12, 2005
Official Sees New Jersey on Verge of a 'Transportation Meltdown'
By DAVID W. CHEN
TRENTON, July 11 - In New Jersey, there are few activities in life as vital, maddening or culturally defining as the task of getting from one place to another.
This is a state, after all, that has the greatest number of, and the most heavily traveled, miles of highway per capita in the country. There is a joke about it - "So you're from New Jersey? What Exit?" - so ubiquitous that the New Jersey Historical Society organized an online exhibition about the New Jersey Turnpike a few years ago. And the state has provided the backdrop, as well, for an untold number of Bruce Springsteen songs about cars, roads and journeys.
But transportation experts are warning that speed limits may have to be lowered. That potholes may remain unfilled. That lanes may be closed for long periods because of delays in maintenance work. And that there may be fewer buses and trains available, which would make commuters wait longer and stand once aboard.
"Simply put, New Jersey is facing a transportation meltdown," said Thomas G. Dallessio, vice president and New Jersey director of the Regional Plan Association, the main authors of a study on the Transportation Trust Fund, the state's primary mechanism to repair roads and bridges. The report, released on Monday by a coalition of planners, transportation groups and academics, urges the state's elected officials to figure out a way to replenish the fund by next summer.
The warning comes two years after a commission appointed by former Gov. James E. McGreevey concluded that the state's transportation infrastructure was crumbling so rapidly that the state needed to more than double what it charged motorists for a gallon of gas - New Jersey now has one of the country's lowest gasoline taxes - to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for basic maintenance work.
But that prognosis has become even graver, according to the report, because starting in July 2006, the fund's entire $805 million budget would have to be used to pay off the loans that New Jersey lawmakers relied on in the 1990's to pay for transportation projects.
The political dynamics, however, may be different. Many legislators and political veterans expect that the Legislature may try to raise the gas tax above its current 14.5 cents per gallon sometime this winter, during the lame-duck session. But the two candidates for governor in November - Senator Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, and Douglas R. Forrester, a Republican - said on Monday that they were leery of any gas tax increases, especially at a time when voters have been angry about high property tax bills.
New Jersey is also far from the only state that is grappling with the practice, pursued enthusiastically during the 1990's by politicians of all stripes, of borrowing a lot of money and having too little to pay it back. Oregon, for instance, is experimenting with a mileage tax that would assess taxes based on how long someone travels, and on what roads. And in Virginia - the only other state with a governor's race in November - transportation looms as one of the biggest issues.
"We're certainly in a new era of transportation finance, because we haven't really dealt with these issues in this country before," said Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "In the case of New Jersey and Virginia, not only have they not addressed all the concerns, they're hamstrung to address future concerns."
Yet not that long ago, New Jersey's trust fund was considered the envy, and not the bane, of transportation experts everywhere.
The fund was established in 1984 as a way to set gasoline taxes aside for road and bridge repairs, and to prevent lawmakers from siphoning the money toward nontransportation projects. Since 1990, however, the fund has depended so heavily on loans that at its current pace, its entire annual budget would not pay off that debt until 2021, said Alexis F. Perrotta, a senior policy analyst with the Regional Plan Association.
To reform the fund, the report called on the state to set up a five-person oversight committee, similar to the New York State Financial Control Board that was created in 1975 to pull New York City from the precipice of bankruptcy.
The report urges the state to stop diverting $115 million from the transportation trust fund each year to its general coffers and to stop tapping $300 million from its capital funds each year to pay for basic operating expenses.
And, in what figures to be the most politically difficult task, the report suggested that the state look aggressively for new revenue sources. These could include raising New Jersey Transit fares as well as tolls on the turnpike and the Garden State Parkway.
One suggestion that Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey floated this year was leasing sections of the state's toll roads to corporations or private donors who would maintain them. Another one, mentioned by Mr. Corzine after a news conference at the State House on Monday about the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, would be to sell off real estate near the Vince Lombardi Service Area in Bergen County.
But if these endeavors do not pan out, and the trust fund remains underfinanced, the consequences could be quite devastating.
"When New Jersey becomes a parking lot, we'll become the national laughingstock again," said Michael Aaron Rockland, a professor of American Studies at Rutgers and a co-author of the 1989 book "Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike." He added, "The whole thing continues to make it more absurd that we continue to be called the Garden State."
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