Luncheon With DOT Commissioner
April 27th 2007 09:54 am
On April 26 I had the opportunity to attend a luncheon at Princeton University sponsored by Princeton’s Policy Research Institute. The speaker was Kris Kolluri, New Jersey Commissioner of Transportation, and I believe many would be interested in some of the things he had to say:
In the past, New Jersey’s various transportation-related agencies operated more or less independently. Mr. Kolluri and Governor Corzine believe they must now be unified. He did not elaborate on this.
Some statistics:
* New Jersey’s vehicle-miles per year on highways total 74 billion. This number is growing at 2% per year.
* In 10 to 15 years New Jersey’s population is expected to increase by 1 million.
* The number of containers handled by New Jersey’s ports is expected to triple.
* New Jersey’s debt continues to increase, and a plan to manage this debt is our highest priority.
Mr. Kolluri and Governor Corzine favor the controversial idea of privatizing some of our highways. They are calling this plan “asset monetization,” and they hope to present this as a major proposal in just a few more weeks, when Governor Corzine has had more time to recover from his recent accident. We can learn a lot from the mistakes already made by some other states. Proceeds of such a sale must be used for capital expenses and for paying down New Jersey’s debt. We will keep tolls at a reasonable rate and we will not compromise on security concerns. 40% of the proceeds should be used for public transportation.
New Jersey’s gasoline tax is among the lowest in the United States. Surely an increase in that tax would be an excellent way to deal with capital expenses and pay down the debt, but the current political reality is that such a tax increase cannot be passed this year.
I asked Mr. Kolluri: If 40% of the proceeds from “asset monetization” are directed to public transportation, would that include new rail construction such as MOM and the Lackawanna Cutoff for regions which currently have no rail service at all? Mr. Kolluri replied in the affirmative. He did not discuss the Cutoff, but he did state emphatically that “MOM is absolutely imperative.” He is convinced that the MOM project will easily draw enough ridership to be successful, although he refused to say which alignment he prefers. Then he qualified this by lamenting the high cost of Access to the Region’s Core, and that MOM would have to wait until T.H.E. Tunnel is completed. Where will we get the money for MOM? he added, and then said DOT might consider establishing bus rapid transit (BRT) on Route 9 as a short-term solution while waiting for MOM to be built.
Mr. Kolluri said that our current agreement with Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor is unsatisfactory, because NJ Transit has no say in how trains are dispatched. This results in NJT trains nearly always being subservient to Amtrak trains. We need to have a say and have more control over this situation.
Short answers to some other questions: (1) The “Dinky,” which is the shuttle between Princeton and Princeton Junction, is one of the state’s most successful rail lines. “The Dinky will stay!” said Mr. Kolluri firmly. It will continue in its present form and will not be discontinued for buses or BRT. (2) No decision has been made yet whether to support the concept of congestion pricing, such as the plan proposed by New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg.
After the meeting concluded, I handed Mr. Kolluri a copy of MODC’s flier announcing the Rally for MOM Rail to be held in Manalapan on May 11. I told him he would be very welcome to attend and speak; he took the paper and put it in his pocket.
DAN GREEN
LRTADV responded on 27 Apr 2007 at 4:07 pm #
Daniel,
I’d be curious as to why NJT made no effort to purchase the Robbinsville Industrial Track for expanding the River Line light rail line. They were mentioned only tangentially in the STB and Conrail documents last year.
John 76 responded on 27 Apr 2007 at 9:32 pm #
The Governor proposes to sell the Turnpike and turn it into a privately owned but regulated public utility. He must see this as politically possible, something that will be more acceptable to the people of the state than raising the gas tax is. I wonder if he has any data such as public opinion surveys to show that the voters are ready to buy into this idea or if he has any stategy to persuade the voters that this is a sound idea. I am willing to be persuaded that selling the Turnpike is a sound solution to our deficit but I would certainly like to hear the Governor’s reasoning.
Joe Versaggi responded on 29 Apr 2007 at 3:27 pm #
Mr. Kolluri could not have made it more clear that they will hold MOM hostage for both THE Tunnel and the invention as well as mass production of a dual-mode engine. It also goes to show their obsession with Manhattan-centric commutes and little else. Tey view it as a Route 9-Manhattan market and little esle. Their policies have not changed a bit in 10 years except that “Enhanced Bus” is now called “B.R.T.”. Southern Montana has a better chance of rail passenger service by then than western Middlesex and the rest of the MOM line.
Do not become complacent by his comforting remarks on The Dinky. While he said it is a top performer, he has every intention of undermining that performance by both a route truncation and a parallel BRT operation sharing its ROW. Then it will no longer be viable and it will go away. Should NJT jettison its Arrow IV procurement with more bi-levels, the gravestone will have been made. That is the next thing to look out for. Watch what they do, not what they say.
LRTADV responded on 29 Apr 2007 at 5:06 pm #
i have never understood the justification for BRT. The Dinky serves an entirely different market than the Route 1 corridor, principally the University community and commuters to the Big Apple and Philly. Why don’t they just put up some Jersey barriers on Route 1 and have a dedicated bus lane there? Another puzzling aspect of the plan is to have a park-and-ride in East Windsor next to the Twin Rivers development and have buses use the Hightstown Bypass and Route 571 to Route 1. Suburban Transit ran a similar route to Princeton for years and eventually cut the service back to the point where it was unusable. The last bus out of Princeton was 5:30 PM. I doubt any more people will use the proposed system. Many of the same retailers on Route 1 either have stores on Route 130 or will have them. The higher-end stores can be found in the Freehold Raceway Mall. If there is any attempt to coerce people into using this thing, they will just drive to other shopping centers. A significant portion of the traffic on Route 1 can be attributed to people avoiding the bottleneck at Exit 8A of the Turnpike and taking what they perceive to be a short cut to I-95. After the widening of the Turnpike from Exit 8A in Jamesburg to Exit 6 in Mansfield and the addition of a second Delaware Bridge to accomodate the connection with I-76, the through traffic on Route 1 should diminish considerably.