NJ-ARP Blog

I wrote about the advantages of raising the state’s gas tax back in October. Now, Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) has proposed a combination of an increased gas tax, increased tolls, and selling the lottery as a way to pay down state debt and pay for transportation projects:

Wisniewski’s plan would not create the public, nonprofit corporation that Corzine has proposed for operating the toll roads. Instead, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority would continue to run the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, and also would take over the Atlantic City Expressway from the South Jersey Transportation Authority…

Wisniewski’s plan would boost tolls on the Turnpike by 25 percent three times between this year and 2016. Garden State Parkway tolls would be increased by 15 cents this year and 25 cents in 2014, and Atlantic City Expressway tolls would go up by 25 cents this year and again in 2014…

Wisniewski’s plan also would increase New Jersey’s gas tax by six cents a gallon in each of the next three years and by the cost of inflation every year afterward. The state taxes on a gallon of gas in New Jersey are 14.5 cents today. Only Wyoming and Alaska have lower rates…

Wisniewski’s plan would use neither toll nor gas tax revenues to reduce general state debt. Instead, he said, the sale or lease of the Lottery could raise up to $10 billion for that purpose. His plan also embraces a tax on water consumption of up to $8 per quarter to pay for open space preservation, freeing up other funds for debt reduction.

Of course there’s no magic bullet, but this plan sounds a lot more fair than Corzine’s scheme. (I pointed out how unfair Corzine’s scheme is in this post.) Wisniewski’s plan also avoids the overhead of an additional layer of bureaucracy. And the 18 cents/gallon gas tax increase will cost only $7.50 per month for driving 15,000 miles/year in a car that gets 30 miles/gallon.

Posted at 12:54 pm by Bob Scheurle.
Filed under Tolls & Taxes | 4 Comments »

I had an opportunity to read the Portal Bridge DEIS over the weekend. Leaving aside the broader issues of THE Tunnel and its relation to this project etc. and focusing on just this document, here are a few observations and comments. You can view the relevant document at Portal Bridge Alternatives in DEIS. See Figure 3-5 which appears between page 3-9 and page 3-10 of this document for a schematic of the track layout before THE Tunnel related infrastructure is built.

The document is well written and contains an enormous amount of detail. One gathers that in summary the project consists of replacing the current Portal Bridge with two bridges - a Northern Bridge North of the current Portal Bridge that will carry three tracks (tracks 2, 3, 4 the NEC or NYPS tracks) and a Southern Bridge which could be either at the location of the current Portal Bridge or a little South of it, carrying two tracks (tracks 5 and 6, the PSNYE or 34th St station tracks).

The Northern Bridge will be a fixed structure with 50 feet clearance below it. The Southern Bridge will be a lift bridge with 40 feet clearance below it in the lowered position and 50 feet in the raised position. Study suggests that the 40 feet clearance will be enough to limit the need for opening it to less than once a month on an average.
Continue Reading »

Posted at 11:19 am by Jishnu Mukerji.
Filed under Portal Bridge & Secaucus Transfer | 4 Comments »

A friend of mine recently had to make a trip from Hoboken to Chatham, on the Morris & Essex Line, on a Saturday morning. He complained that the trip took over an hour. That sounded way too long for a 23.5 mile trip, so I checked the schedule. My friend was right, the trip is scheduled for 64 minutes, an average speed of 22.0 mph.

So I checked a couple old schedules, and I saw that the trip was much faster in the past. In 1985, the trip took 35 minutes, an average speed of 40.3 mph. And in 1946, a local train, including stops at Harrison, Roseville Ave, and Grove St (none of which have service anymore), took 46 minutes, an average speed of 30.7 mph.

To summarize:
1946: 46 minutes, 30.7 mph.
1985: 35 minutes, 40.3 mph.
2008: 64 minutes, 22.0 mph.

So our modern, high-tech equipment can’t even match the times of the old trains of 62 years ago.

While I was at it, I took a look at the Northeast Corridor schedules from Trenton to New York Penn Station on a Saturday morning:

1979: 73 minutes, 47.8 mph (local).
2008: 80 minutes, 43.6 mph (express).
2008: 94 minutes, 37.1 mph (local).

Note that today’s express trains are slower than 1979’s local trains. And the local trains take over 20 minutes longer than 1979’s trains.

How can NJ Transit justify schedules which are so much slower than in the past?

Posted at 6:04 pm by Bob Scheurle.
Filed under Express trains & Schedules & Weekend service | 28 Comments »

On Sunday, Governor Corzine announced that the MOM line will not go through Middlesex County. “It will be the MO line, not the MOM line,” Corzine said. Today, in a letter in the Home News Tribune, NJ Transit announced they will ignore the results of the MOM DEIS:

Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri and NJ Transit Executive Director Richard Sarles said at an NJ Transit board meeting last week that NJ Transit will complete the DEIS process including all three alternatives as required to avoid jeopardizing future federal funding or triggering a requirement to start the process over.

They also reiterated that Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s direction sets a clear path forward after the completion of the DEIS.

Lynn Bowersox
Assistant executive director, Corporate communications and external affairs
NJ TRANSIT

So after spending millions of dollars and close to a decade studying MOM, NJT is going to ignore the study and cave-in to Middlesex County Democrats, to the detriment of the traveling public, just because the Governor says so. And then politicians wonder why people have lost faith in our government.

Posted at 7:49 am by Bob Scheurle.
Filed under M.O.M. Line | 7 Comments »

Update: The Rail Passenger Conference has been postponed entirely. DVARP, which is in charge of both the conference and the NARP Region 3 meeting, just released the following:

Due to problems with speaker availability and the illness of one of our committee members, we have elected to postpone the Northeast Rail Passenger Conference to a later date this year. The new date will be announced as soon as we have confirmation.

The NARP Region 3 meeting WILL PROCEED AS SCHEDULED Saturday, February 16, at Logan Hall on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania (36th and Spruce Sts., Philadelphia) beginning at 10:00 and ending mid-afternoon.

Persons who have pre-registered for the full conference will be offered the opportunity to attend on the rescheduled dates or a full refund of conference fees. We hope everyone will still come to the Region 3 meeting Saturday.

DVARP regrets any inconvenience this may cause.

Posted at 3:00 pm by Albert L. Papp, Jr..
Filed under NARP | 1 Comment »

NJ-ARP Hotline #616 is now online. When you’re finished reading the Hotline, you can come back here and leave your comments in this thread.

Posted at 11:55 am by admin.
Filed under Hotline | No Comments »

Last summer, NJ Transit said the earliest weekend service could start on the Montclair Line was “the latter half of 2008″. Now, weekend service has been delayed to at least the fall of 2009.

The most recent in a line of excuses is construction work by NJDOT on the Bloomfield Avenue bridge over the railroad tracks. Note that the construction contract hasn’t been awarded yet, so the September 2009 estimate for completion of the project is exactly that - an estimate.

As the saying goes: there’s no time like the present for postponing what you don’t want to do.

The only good news is that the township is in favor of weekend service:

Mayor Ed Remsen said NJ Transit had informed Montclair of the delay. “It’s disappointing but understandable,” he said. “We’re all looking forward to it. … We’re just going to have to wait a little longer.”

Posted at 8:29 am by Bob Scheurle.
Filed under Montclair Connection & Weekend service | 12 Comments »

The owner of the first place New Jersey Devils was just on TV. He said that 53% of the fans take transit to the Prudential Center. Devils ticket sales are up 26% from last year. He also said they realize that there aren’t enough eating establishments for the non-premium ticket holders, so they’re planning to add three “pubs” - two on the upper concourse and one on the lower concourse.

Posted at 8:00 pm by Bob Scheurle.
Filed under Prudential Center | 3 Comments »

Star-Ledger (Middlesex Edition), Thursday, January 24, 2008
BY MARYANN SPOTO, Star-Ledger Staff

A majority of residents living near a proposed rail line through Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex counties want the service in order to reduce their commute time and ease congested roadways, a new poll shows.

Monmouth and Ocean county freeholders released the results yesterday with the goal of convincing Middlesex County officials the so-called MOM Passenger Rail Line is the way to get people to and from central New Jersey.

Middlesex leaders have cited safety concerns, increased train traffic and plummeting property values as some of the reasons they object to the proposal.

The Star Ledger

It just keeps getting better and better:

“To help alleviate the region’s growing pains, NJ Transit added bus service to Manhattan, but even that wasn’t enough to meet commuters’ demands. NJ Transit estimates more than 33,000 people would use the Monmouth Junction Alignment — the equivalent of the entire daily ridership on the North Jersey Coast Line.”

“He (Crabiel) reiterated the county’s objections, including safety concerns about increased train traffic at certain crossings.”

The argument is getting weaker and weaker. Of course they will have to put increased protection at many grade crossings. That’s already factored in.

“We don’t get that much benefit in Middlesex County,” Crabiel said.

South Brunswick, Monroe and Jamesburg residents breathe the same increasingly bad air as the rest of us in the county do. And current property price decreases have nothing to do with MOM.

For over 20 years, this project has been dragged through endless debate and delay by a small minority pocket of upper middle class residents of Monroe, Jamesburg and South Brunswick who were silly enough to buy real estate close to active railroad lines - depsite what their real estate agents told them about “unused tracks or the odd freight train every now and then.”

The greater good of the central part of the state is served by the MOM line with a major destination at New Brunswick. Local roads haven’t kept up with the pace of unchecked development in Middlesex, let alone Monmouth and Ocean. Now, it’s too late to build highways - there’s no more land.

The ability of the railroad to carry 5 to 8 times the number of people per hour in the same space as two highway lanes makes any further argument moot. The time has come to get this vital transportation corridor up and running.

Posted at 11:59 am by E-44.
Filed under M.O.M. Line | 4 Comments »

This poll is from Fairleigh Dickinson University:

Do you support or oppose raising tolls on the Turnpike and Parkway to provide new funds to repair bridges and roads, widen the Turnpike and restructure the state’s finances?

Support      34%
Oppose       57%
Mixed/Unsure  9%

Posted at 6:58 am by Bob Scheurle.
Filed under Tolls & Taxes | No Comments »