Governor-elect Jon Corzine faces the immediate problem of leading a state that has no money to invest in transportation infrastructure or operations.  By mid-2006, New Jersey’s gas tax revenue will be consumed by debt. That will affect not only infrastructure, but also the operating budgets of NJ Transit and NJ DOT, because these agencies have been forced by inadequate appropriations in Trenton to raid the construction budgets to meet day-to-day expenses like bus fuel, routine road maintenance, snow plowing, train conductors and the like. 

   Wednesday editorials were not slow to task Corzine with fixing these problems: “Immediately, Corzine must devise a revenue source for the transportation trust fund,” wrote the Star-Ledger.

   A new report by the Regional Plan Association lays out an extensive menu of options for raising new transportation resources in New Jersey (www.rpa.org).  It reiterates that $1.3 billion in current state transportation funding needs to be completely replaced by 2006, and that failure to do so could also jeopardize and equivalent amount of federal funding. Any choice to raise a large new pot of money will be difficult, but the worst course of all will be to cut transportation programs, reversing recent progress fixing the state’s roadway infrastructure and attracting more riders to mass transit. 

   To raise the money needed to undertake robust transit and DOT programs, Corzine will have to bring the public to an understanding of the problem, including an exposé of past borrow-and-spend practices, convince it that new revenue is ironclad and will not leak out into other areas of state spending and identify key transportation priorities. 

   Ironically, New Jersey faces its terrible transportation finance problem at a point where state government is getting transportation policy right.  Emphasis on investment in basic infrastructure, smart transportation-efficient development partnerships with municipalities and intense focus on key transit projects like a new commuter rail tunnel to Manhattan are strong ingredients for a 21st Century transportation strategy.  Corzine could make two strong votes in favor of this direction by retaining Jack Lettiere as NJ transportation commissioner and George Warrington as NJ Transit executive director.  

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