| Issue 181 | July 17, 1998 |
NJDOT Can't Use $12.6 Million - Seeks Gas Tax Hike, but Hands Dough to Toll Road -
In response to NJDOT's assertion that no repair projects on roads under state or local jurisdiction are ready to move forward other than those already fully funded, the Board of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority voted this week to allocate $12.6 million for signage, paving and bridge painting on the New Jersey Turnpike in Bergen County. Morris County cast the lone dissenting vote. This is the first time that the NJTPA has approved federal funding for a project on any of New Jersey's toll roads.
The NJTPA had indicated a strong preference for funding publicly-operated roads with the money and skepticism about the lack of needy projects, but knuckled under to DOT once again after the agency rejected all alternative projects put forward by the counties and TPA staff as not ready to move ahead.
NJDOT seemed unembarrassed to reveal its inability to find a use for the money even while pushing for a 4-cent hike in the gas tax, which would increase revenues available to the agency. The Whitman Administration has circulated long lists of transportation projects "at risk" should the tax increase not come to pass. But DOT's inability to get maintenance projects underway with the money it already has prompts questions whether adding $200 million a year to the State's transportation budget with no strings attached will yield any increase in road and bridge repair projects.
The award of funds to the Turnpike prompted other questions as well. Freeholder William Van Dyke of Bergen County raised the specter of the $300 million Turnpike interchange proposed for the Hackensack Meadowlands following suit in seeking federal funds. Other Freeholders stated that the circumstances were unusual and should not be regarded as setting a precedent. Yet Turnpike Director Edward Gross made clear that he was not seeking the funds because the toll road needed money for the projects (when reporters asked Gross whether the Turnpike could afford the Bergen project itself, he replied, "Sure") but rather to establish the Turnpike's right to an allotment of funds annually, a notion based on the terms of the 1992 transfer of a section of I-95 from State to Turnpike hands.
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