New Jerseyans are driving less and taking transit more, according to a just-released update of the Campaign’s The State of Transportation: Benchmarks for Sustainable Transportation in New Jersey. The number of miles New Jersey residents traveled by bus and rail grew by 45 percent from 1997 to 2007, while driving grew by less than half that rate.
The report’s release was timed to coincide with and inform the debate on the state’s Transportation Trust Fund, which must be reauthorized in early 2010 to ensure adequate funding for the fiscal year 2011 capital plan.
“New Jersey residents are embracing mass transit,” said Kate Slevin, Tri-State Transportation Campaign executive director. “The facts in this report should guide the next Governor’s transportation policies. New Jerseyans clearly need and want more public transportation.”
The report shows, for the first time in recent years, a deviation from the steady 2% annual growth rate in the number of miles driven. In 2007, statewide vehicle miles traveled grew by just 0.6%. Preliminary data from 2008 show this trend accelerating, as New Jerseyans leave their cars at home and opt for transit in response to fluctuating gas prices and the economic recession.
The State of Transportation examines trends in 25 different measures of transportation in New Jersey, including infrastructure, service, travel choices, congestion and crowding, reliability, and impacts on the state’s economy and environment. Illustrated with more than 50 graphs, tables and maps, the report is intended to set clear measures of the state’s progress toward a more balanced, environment-friendly and reliable transportation system.
Among the report’s other key findings:
- New Jersey’s modest population growth is geographically disconnected from the state’s robust employment growth. In other words, more people are living farther away from where they work and where the new jobs are being created. Such a disperse jobs-housing pattern is difficult to serve with transit.
- Truck travel continues to grow, jumping 30% from 1997 to 2007, but is declining in most recent years. And revised FHWA estimates show much more modest projected growth in truck travel than previously forecasted for the state. Trucks are also comprising a smaller share of the vehicle mix on the state’s roadways.
- Pedestrian fatalities have held more or less steady at 150 per year over the period, even as total traffic fatalities declined to their lowest level in more than a decade in 2007, dropping to 724 from a high of 775 in 1997. Preliminary data from 2008 show total and pedestrian fatalities dropping steeply, even as bicyclist fatalities nearly double from the previous year.
- New Jersey’s fix-it-first policy has improved bridge conditions in recent years, but the state’s road and bridge conditions remain among the worst in the nation, with 82% of the state’s roads in “less than good condition,” and nearly 35% of bridges rated deficient.
- Economic growth may be decoupling from increases in driving – the economy appears to be becoming more efficient from a transportation point of view, with fewer miles driven for every dollar of economic activity produced.
- The state has made gains in reducing criteria pollutant emissions from cars and trucks, though greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow in-line with fuel consumption.
Anon, the Voorhees/Booz Allen Hamilton report you link to says that PRT systems are not ready for public deployment, “PRT technology has not yet advanced to a state of commercial readiness,” and as there are no fully operational PRT systems there is no real-world evidence to support or disprove the idea that PRT can serve a dispersed jobs-housing pattern. That doesn’t square with your comments here and earlier, which could be interpreted as shilling for a specific company.
To all commenters, this is not the space to advertise for a particular company or to discuss topics outside of the realm of blog posts, which is what happened after PRT was brought up on an earlier thread about the Parkway. Comments that are clearly off-topic will be deleted.
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PRT is transit, and this is a transit blog.
I never said PRT could or should be implemented overnight, I merely explained why we should be devoting more attention to it as a possible transit solution. The report states that the reason no significant systems are deployed yet is not because of technical limitations but because of unwillingness to devote the resources necessary to prove it. If the criterion for warranting the funds necessary to prove it is that the technology already be proven then obviously it will never be proven. That’s why I’m advocating that we actually try to prove it. In any case, the cost of a test system pales in comparison to the amount we spend on current transportation projects. That’s why my previous comments suggesting PRT were in response to MTR’s post about $1 billion in funds for highway widening. Clearly if we’re going to be spending billions on transportation projects, R&D for PRT, as risky an investment as people might think it is, is a better candidate for such funds than highway widening, don’t you think?
I am not employed or reimbursed by any transit company. I am a transit enthusiast who thinks PRT is a worthwhile endeavor. If you’d like to exclude PRT from the discussion of possible transit solutions then that is of course your decision, and I’ll be happy to oblige.
“Such a disperse jobs-housing pattern is difficult to serve with transit.”
Not with PRT.