Last Tuesday, during a transportation and air quality public hearing for the New Jersey Meadowlands Xanadu project, representatives from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign testified that the traffic analysis associated with the project’s draft environmental impact statement is terribly inadequate.

One glaring omission is the complete absence of information on Xanadu’s impact on the morning peak hour traffic volumes. Xanadu is likely to generate a significant number of jobs, as well as customers, and Route 120 and Route 3, two notoriously congested roads, will undoubtedly be affected by the Xanadu project during the morning rush hours. Yet nothing regarding the morning impact on these roads was included in the project’s DEIS.

The Campaign also urged a broader roadway network study that will look at impacts on everyone on the road, not just those driving to Xanadu. The current Xanadu study fails to look at key nearby congestion spots on key routes such as the Turnpike and Route 3.

The evening peak hours analyzed by the developer appear to be biased. The study defines afternoon rush hour as 4:30-5:30 pm. Placing it in such an early, and narrow time frame is absurd given that Route 3 westbound traffic originates from the Lincoln Tunnel and New York City, and from Hudson County, and extends far beyond 5:30. The Port Authority, for instance, defines the Lincoln Tunnel rush period as 4-7pm. The weekday evening "event" peak is placed between 7:15 and 8:15 pm , which is also questionable, given that Meadowlands sports events generally begin at 7:30. These time frames are conspicuously separate, and seem designed to show Xanadu will have little influence on the already tough rush hour traffic situation in Hudson, Essex and southern Bergen counties. The present analysis also makes arbitrary assumptions suggesting that customers will avoid Xanadu entertainment attractions during major events.

Traffic projections for hotel and office developments were based on a 1990 Hackensack Meadowlands Transportation study. Traffic patterns in that work are obviously extremely dated and unreliable for a realistic evaluation today.

No information about parking management and the allocation of built parking among various uses and travel markets at Xanadu was available in the DEIS.

The Campaign concluded by noting that traffic impacts will be worse because Mack-Cali, Xanadu’s developer, is not contributing to mass transit infrastructure. NJ Transit has plans to serve the site, but it’s unclear why taxpayers should foot the bill. Bus access plans for the site are unclear.