A series of official studies over the past 10 years have consistently found that traffic demand for the NJ Turnpike’s proposed Route 92 will be weak, according to a review by the Tri-State Campaign:

• A 1997 study commissioned by the NJ DEP found that the NJ Turnpike Authority did not demonstrate that there was sufficient demand for the construction of Route 92: "Current demand for traffic flow between US 1 and Interchange 8A of the Turnpike is not clearly established by the submitted data."

• A 1998 report for the US EPA made a similar determination: "Route 92’s potential market is only 18% of all trips with either an origin or a destination in the study area. Route 92 will only remove 9% of all internal-external and 9% of the external-internal trips from east-west local roads." The report concluded that Route 92 would remove just 3,309 daily through trips from the local east-west roads, representing 5-7% of all the current through trips using local east-west roads.

• Data in the Turnpike Authority’s new Route 92 draft environmental impact statement confirm these findings, although the report does not spell out this conclusion or present a coherent overview of its own traffic data. The Tri-State Campaign combed through the numbers in appendices to compile projected Route 92 traffic demand.

The DEIS, based on updated traffic counts, shows that about 3,378 autos would use Rt. 92 in the morning peak hour westbound (369 eastbound) by 2028. During the evening peak hour, about 2,252 autos would use the highway eastbound (551 westbound) in 2028. Compared to east-west traffic the DEIS projects for southern Middlesex County, Route 92 will capture just 18%, or less than one-fifth of the peak hour morning westbound through-trips. It would also attract less than one-third of such trips in the evening peak eastbound, relative to the "no-build" option analyzed in the DEIS.