Boosted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, NJDOT’s proposed Fiscal Year 2010 Capital Program dedicates nearly $3.6 billion in state and federal funding to highway, transit, freight, and bicycling and pedestrian capital projects throughout the state. The program sets aside $1.4 billion to NJ Transit, with the remaining $2.2 billion going to NJDOT. The total dollar amount is up about 10% from last year’s Capital Program. But Tri-State’s analysis of the capital program confirms our concerns that NJDOT is heading in the wrong direction. The agency will more than double the share of the road budget that goes to expansion projects.
TSTC combed through the Capital Program and identified several projects that add significant capacity to the roadway network but weren’t identified as such by NJDOT. These include more than $300 million to widen 8.7 miles of Route 1 in Middlesex County to six lanes, and $80 million to begin work on the controversial Route 206 Bypass in Hillsborough Township.
Adding these 12 projects to those NJDOT categorized as expansion brings the total share of FY2010 highway funding set aside for capacity expansion to 7.5%, jumping to a high of 8.9% in 2011. (If one were to go solely by NJDOT’s classifications, the FY2010 Capital Program budgets 2.7 percent of highway funding to capacity expansion. That’s almost twice the share slated for expansion projects in FY2009.)
And these calculations don’t include funds slated for the NJ Turnpike and Garden State Parkway widenings, which are excluded from the NJDOT Capital Program because they are funded through the NJ Turnpike Authority.
NJDOT’s plans for future years present a worrisome trend away from a fix-it-first strategy that has clearly paid dividends. In 1998, the Federal Highway Administration rated 39% of NJ’s bridges deficient. By 2008, this had improved to 33.5%.
That is significant, but New Jersey’s bridges are still 10th worst among all states and there is clearly more work to be done. The good news is that more than 35% of the FY2010 Capital Program is specifically dedicated to road and bridge rehabilitation and preservation, with much of the rest of the funding also going to maintenance projects, though not classified as such. But it’s an open question whether NJDOT will remain a national model for prioritizing fix-it-first projects over the construction of new and wider roads.
Was the capital program really “boosted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act?” I don’t think any of that stimulus money is included in the capital budget. That’s a whole seperate deal. And it’s supposed to be. The point of the ARRA $$ was to allow states to spend additional money as a way to stimulate the economy. The $3.6 billion for the capital budget is the same as last year’s figure. New Jersey got just over $1 billion in ARRA funds. If those funds are included in the capital budget, there’s no additional spending going on here.
[…] Mobilizing the Region News and opinion from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. Updated daily, Monday-Friday. « Road Widening Starts to Creep Back Into NJDOT Plans […]
[…] to pay for the projects. We’ve also examined the state’s future spending plans, identifying a worrisome trend toward backsliding away from fix-it-first and toward more spending on highway expansion. Neither of […]
[…] in the Proposed Capital Program, it is an increase from previous years when new road capacity made up less than 4% of the agency’s capital program. Furthermore, the reduction may be misleading—$20.7 million […]