MTR 264, Reports Map Highway Industry Goals

Mobilizing the Region
Issue 264 April 7, 2000

Reports Map Highway Industry Goals

Reports released last month by New York and New Jersey highway industry groups provide a sense of the priorities of this powerful constituency for expanded state DOT spending. Their message is that rough roads and congestion are costing drivers intolerable amounts of both time and money. Their solution is more public spending on highways, but the devil is in the details.

Reports for the "Crisis Program," a lobbying project of the NY Associated General Contractors, call for $17 billion for maintenance of state-owned roadways and bridges and another $9 billion in reconstruction for "congestion-related widening" and remedies for "excessively narrow lanes" and "excessively narrow shoulder widths."

Though timed to influence the capital plan debate in Albany, the big numbers appear to represent more of a highway expansion-oriented overall needs assessment rather than a realistic 5-year plan. For comparison, the 20-year MTA needs assessment estimated by the Regional Plan Association comes to over $60 billion.

- New Jersey: Balanced Objectives?-

In a report for the New Jersey Alliance for Action, researchers at the NJ Institute of Technology used data from a Texas Transportation Institute report on comparative congestion in the United States to estimate that traffic jam delays cost New Jersey drivers $4.9 billion last year - $880 per licensed driver. The greatest delays and costs were found to be in Somerset, Bergen, Morris, Monmouth, and Middlesex counties.

The report concludes that the solution to congestion in NJ must be "a balance between construction of new highway and transit facilities." But the most concrete suggestions given are to widen highways. The report's estimates of time savings for commuters do not reflect time costs of delays caused by construction or the amount of extra cars and trucks, and traffic-generating sprawl development that widening will impose on routes undergoing significant work.