Speaking at to an audience of transportation experts at the state-wide TransAction conference in Atlantic City last week, NJ Transportation Commissioner Jack Lettiere delivered a fiery keynote address outlining DOT’s embrace of transportation reform principles and the need to refinance the state’s transportation system. His words brought the room to their feet for what organizers said was the first standing ovation in the 30-year history of the conference.

Lettiere said transportation agencies have failed to make the connection between transportation, land use, and quality of life, yet complacency has prohibited more innovative thinking until now. "We have a new mission," Lettiere added, "to build better communities, places where people want to live and build futures for their children."

DOT will no longer make up for local plans that create sprawling, congestion-inducing development, the commissioner said. "Every highway that DOT has recently widened has been re-filled with cars in three years," Lettiere said. He argued that the DOT cannot continue to chase the consequences of bad development policy.

Lettiere closed by arguing that New Jersey risks its economic future and quality of life by allowing its transportation systems to flirt with bankruptcy. He delivered a stirring moral case for reinvestment in economy-sustaining infrastructure, saying that continued neglect will put our region and nation behind other developed and developing countries. He urged the hundreds in the room to go to work on the state legislature to ensure a full-scale reauthorization of the state Transportation Trust Fund.

NJDOT Capital Program Continues Positive Trend

For the third straight year, NJDOT’s fiscal 2006 capital program demonstrates a strong commitment to repairing infrastructure, with money for highway capacity expansion at less than 3% of the total, down from 4.2% last year and much higher levels in the 1990s. Most spending is for road and bridge repair, local aid and small scale congestion fixes. The share of funding for local aid drops in the 2006 program compared to the 2005 program, from 19% ($284 million) to 15% ($247 million). 

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