Last week, Governor James McGreevey announced that NJ transportation commissioner James Fox will become his chief of staff, replacing the outgoing Gary Taffet.  The change comes at an important time in the McGreevey administration.  At the state’s recent sprawl summit, McGreevey and Fox declared New Jersey would stop subsidizing sprawl by building roads into rural or relatively undeveloped areas (MTR #389).This was a good first step, but translating it into practice is a job still ahead for NJ DOT. 

In his new job, Fox will be in position to ensure that DOT sticks to this path, and to work on big problems like how to finance transportation when the current state transportation trust fund deal expires in 2004.But he will also be more removed from day-to-day decision making at the department.

Fox’s likely successor is Deputy Commissioner Jack Lettiere, who has run NJ DOT’s capital program for a number of years.  Meeting the McGreevey mandate to end sprawl subsidies will require Lettiere to invest more in road and bridge repair, rail freight and bike/pedestrian projects, and to figure out what to do with a number of sprawl-causing road projects still in the state’s project pipeline (MTR #382).

Congestion and Sprawl: Whose Problem to Solve?  
(Oct. 28, 2002)

More Sprawl Highways for NJ 
(Sept. 9, 2002)

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