Current edition: Mobilizing the Region #482
December 6, 2004
Turnpike Plan Would Add $1 Billion To Jersey's Transportation Tab
The Tri-State Transportation Campaign urged New Jerseyans to approach Governor Codey’s announcement that he would seek to add lanes to the New Jersey Turnpike between Middlesex and Burlington counties with caution. Although the bottleneck where the highway’s truck lanes end between Exits 8 and 8A represents a tremendous traffic problem, the Turnpike will have to explain why such an extensive project — comprising 40 to 80 miles of new lanes — will be needed to provide some relief for it.
Transit Funding Spotlght on Governor Pataki
Mayor Bloomberg has said he will oppose the fare increases the MTA board is slated to vote in favor of Dec. 16, even if he has declined to wage a real campaign in favor of sensible mass transit funding.
It is possible that setting the Turnpike Authority the task of extending new lanes southward from the truck lane merge near the Middlesex-Mercer county border will change the focus of transportation planning in central New Jersey away from the Turnpike’s proposed and hotly contested Route 92 plan.
Land Use Key to Transport Planning
In an interview with the NY Transportation Journal, NY State transportation commissioner Joseph Boardman says that "one of the important things we found in the statewide master plan hearings we conducted this summer (MTR #467) was the level of interest and discussion on land use planning in every community."
New Jersey Transit is the only mass transit system of comparable size in the United States that does not enjoy some form of dedicated tax revenue to support its operating budget.
Transportation Department's Transparency Tested
NYS Department of Transportation was one of the government agencies that passed NYPIRG's recent open government test. NYPIRG sent Freedom of Information letters to various agencies and tracked timeliness of responses.
Though information about the meeting was poorly advertised and therefore few citizens attended, NYC DOT and Transit held the first public meeting – on Staten Island – for their joint bus rapid transit study last week.
NY Waterway announced this week that it is cutting three routes in Jersey City and Hoboken. The company said that if it does not receive assistance soon, there will be more cutbacks followed by a possible shutdown next winter.
A Special Request from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign
| Each week, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign publishes Mobilizing the Region, or MTR. MTR is a bulletin on New Jersey, New York and Connecticut transportation news and opinion from the perspective of advocacy for sustainable transportation. |
| MTR #482 printable format (PDF) file (requires Adobe Acrobat).
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GO TO INDEX of past issues of MTR, since Fall 1994.ll M
Recent editions:
MTR 481-November 22, 2004
MTR 480-November 8, 2004
MTR 479-November 1, 2004
MTR 478-October 25, 2004
