As of 2004, New Jersey had nearly 83,000 lane-miles of Interstates, freeways, expressways, arterials and local roads criss-crossing the state. More than 80 percent of the lane-miles (center-line miles multiplied by the number of lanes for each segment) are in urban and suburban areas. Local roads comprise two-thirds of the state’s total mileage.
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Source: FHWA. Highway Statistics Series, Table HM-60, 1997-2004. |
We attempted to examine the trend in lane mileage, but some data proved unreliable. Beginning in 2003, New Jersey DOT embarked on an effort to improve record-keeping of statewide lane mileage. Roads that had previously not been counted, are now included in the dataset, artificially inflating growth over the last several years. The revised 2004 data should provide an accurate baseline by which we can examine the trend in roadway mileage going forward from this report, but we do not establish any recent trend here. Nonetheless, the data is critical in part because it helps determine how much federal transportation funding the state receives. It is also an important gauge of how well the state is implementing its fix-it-first infrastructure philosophy, and the smart growth principle of directing development into areas with mature infrastructure.