Hudson County is in a somewhat difficult position - it's a transition zone where suburban car culture bangs up against real urban density. To begin to grapple with the results for the county's boom, Hudson County cities and towns need to acknowledge that its growth yields a poorer environment for car commuting and multi-car households, but more opportunities for transit- and pedestrian-oriented city life. Most of all, they need to begin developing policies to build on the advent of the Hudson-Bergen rail line. Managing parking to boost transit commuting is priority number one. For instance, in Jersey City, generous parking supply in office developments continues to promote driving to a transit-rich business district. Second, Hudson municipalities need to embrace robust traffic calming programs to reduce through traffic on residential and retail streets.

Hoboken has had begun planning discussions about options for clearly identifying certain routes as through-traffic bypasses. Some of its studies have shown, however, that reinforcing capacity of some routes will not necessarily yield much traffic relief elsewhere. If the city decides to go that route, the tradeoff should be aggressive traffic calming to keep local streets local. Traffic calming could in fact be the salvation of Russo's traffic reduction plan. While using police to shunt non-Hobokeners aside at the city line may be vulnerable to legal challenge, redesigning access roads so they represent less attractive through routes is not.