New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced several budget cuts Wednesday aimed at plugging the Garden State’s $807 million budget deficit. Among the cuts was a $14.8 million cut to the subsidy the state provides to New Jersey Transit.
This $14.8 million represents just under 1 percent of NJT’s $1.9 billion operating budget, but it’s an operating budget that’s already substantially underfunded. Over the past three years, $1.16 billion ($363 million in FY2012, $397 million in FY2013 and $397 million in FY2014) has been transferred from NJT’s capital fund to meet the agency’s operating needs. That’s nothing to sneeze at: $1.16 billion is enough to fund the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail extension, replace the Portal Bridge or make a serious dent in the cost to build the Camden-Glassboro Light Rail project.
This year, in response to questions from the Assembly Budget Committee, New Jersey Transit Executive Director Ronnie Hakim advised that over $460 million will once again be transferred out of the capital budget to meet operating needs.
It’s bad enough that NJT is forced to redirect a portion of its capital budget to cover a quarter of its operating needs; the $14.8 million subsidy cut just adds salt to the wound.
Fortunately, despite these fiscal constraints, New Jersey Transit spokesman John Durso reassured riders that this cut will not trigger a fare increase:
“NJ Transit has previously announced plans for a balanced, fiscally sound budget, which holds fares stable for a fifth consecutive fiscal year,” Durso said. “Our customers can be assured that these plans have not changed, and they will not change.”
What riders still don’t know, however, is if the cut will result in any service reductions. In order to prevent such reductions, New Jersey legislators must restore the $14.8 million that Governor Christie intends to cut, while they continue to work toward finding sustainable funding sources for transportation.
Be on the lookout for “schedule adjustments”.
There are two types of service cuts: Those that require a public hearing (these are major cuts to service on a given route where there is no alternative service) and “silent cuts” (those that don’t require a public hearing).
Examples of silent cuts that NJ Transit has done in the past:
Widening headways – less frequent service, even when the less frequent service will lead to overcrowding and more frequent customer bypass.
Requiring transfers where a transfer is not now required.
Chopping off the end of a route that only impacts a small percentage of riders on the route.
Why should we be subsidizing the riders, especially the upper income ones? From a New Jersey point of view it is perverse to subsidize commuting to New York since New York state gets the income tax revenues, not New Jersey and New York state and city get the development benefits.
Hasn’t Christie been impeached yet? I guess not… he’s done enough he should have been.
We could easily restore Green Transit funding by eliminating the approximate $63 Million subsidy for NJ government employee cars!
These are not police vehicles, emergency vehicles or other such vehicles these are basically private cars for NJ government employees.
We could also stop chopping into the protected Pinelands to widen the Garden State Parkway which has been funded by taking the tunnel funds and then borrowing an additional $1.6 Billion. By improving North Jersey Coast Line frequencies and other Rail Lines connections thousands of people could take the train instead of driving through endless traffic jams to the Jersey Shore which is what creates the Garden State Parkway bottlenecks.
As far as subsidizing riders to New York, service cuts so far have been almost always to Hoboken service which serves many New Jersey points such as Hoboken itself, the LightRail to Liberty Science Center and all the jobs in Jersey City.
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