A new report from New Jersey Future — titled Getting to Work: Reconnecting Jobs With Transit — is a convincing demonstration of how changes in land use patterns lead to changes in transportation patterns. The report shows a spreading out of employment from 1980 to 2003 in New Jersey, with many of the state’s transit-accessible and walkable cities losing jobs and suburban, dispersed localities gaining jobs. (The exception to the rule is transit-friendly Jersey City, where development around the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail has driven employment growth.)

Not only have employment centers spread out, jobs have moved away from transit-friendly areas. For example, in the 20 municipalities that lost the most jobs from 1980-2003, 30% of workers took transit, carpooled, or walked to work. In the 20 that have gained the most jobs in the same time frame, only 23% of workers did so; remove Jersey City from the list of job gainers and the number falls to 18%.

NJ elected officials have been aware of the sprawling of the state, implementing over the last decade some sprawl-fighting measures such as the Transit Village program and the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit. TSTC’s Skimping on Sidewalks and 2006 State of Transportation reports have found that, since 2000, there has been a modest increase in walking to work and a significant increase in taking transit to work in New Jersey. But there is clearly more that can be done. Among the report’s recommendations are that state agencies:

• Identify the most promising transit hubs (the report also makes suggestions as to what those could be; see right);
• Incentivize development in candidate municipalities by targeted investments in infrastructure, environmental cleanup, and public services (such as police).
• Promote transit-supportive land use by giving municipalities incentives to zone for higher density mixed-use development around transit stations.
• Reorient employer recruitment programs so that large employers are encouraged to locate near transit.
• Expand and improve public transit in ways that reinforce transit-oriented development patterns and that provide access to multiple modes.
• Make the reduction of vehicle miles traveled, and the expansion of transit ridership, explicit goals of state efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

For more, read NJ Future’s press release.