On Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie released his 2010-11 budget, closing a strongly worded address to the State Legislature by asking legislators and state residents to “share in the sacrifices we must make today” in order to “lay the groundwork for growth.”
But the governor’s plan to raise NJ Transit fares by 25% and cut service across the state will do exactly the opposite, eroding a transportation network that is a pillar of the state’s economy. In an op-ed published in Sunday’s Bergen Record, TSTC’s Zoe Baldwin wrote that the plan “will hamper workers’ ability to get to and from their jobs, add congestion to our roadways, stop the economic revitalization that has bloomed around New Jersey’s transit hubs and add to the hardships of many working families.”
And Christie’s transportation proposals hardly qualify as “shared sacrifice.” The governor is raising fares for transit riders but has promised not to touch the gas tax, which has not been increased since 1988. Transit fares have been raised far more often, a historical comparison of New Jersey’s transit fares and gas tax shows. In the Record op-ed, Baldwin points out that a 10-cent/gallon increase in the gas tax would cost the average household $93 annually, while the proposed transit fare increases will cost commuters hundreds or thousands of dollars a year.
New Jersey residents can tell the governor and state legislators that huge fare hikes and service cuts aren’t the answer at www.tstc.org/njtransit/.
Image: TSTC graph using data from NJ Transit.
Enough with the gas tax BS. Christie’s made it abundantly clear he’s not raising it. Let it go. Your whole group is acting like it’ll save NJ Transit and the state – and it’ll only set each family back a hundred bucks a year! Get this: I’d like to use that hundred bucks for groceries, or clothes for my larger-than-average-and-growing-too-fast baby boys, or money for my wife and I to give each other modest gifts for birthdays/anniversaries/Christmas/etc., or maintenance for my ten-year-old car or any number of other things.
Figure something else out, something that doesn’t involve raising taxes (and no, Zoe, raising fares is not raising taxes because fares are collected from commuters who choose to utilize NJ Transit services and are exclusively used by NJ Transit and do not ever leave their coffers – taxes are forcibly levied and collected by the state for the operation of government and government services).
Here’s a thought: privatize NJ Transit’s bus operations division and let anyone who wants to run a bus service run it however they want – prices will drop like a rock with competition and people will have more incentives to use methods of transportation aside from automobiles. Not only that, but the state will be spared the costs associated with owning and operating every bus in New Jersey, and will be able to focus their money and time on other more pressing issues, such as our out of date and crumbling rail and road infrastructure and expansion of our limited rail system.
[This comment was edited for language. -SH]
Uh, James, gas taxes are collected from consumers who choose to utilize NJ DOT roads. They do not cover the cost of maintaining and expanding those roads, hence the roads drain the budget.
Also, please inform yourself about the history of bus transportation in New Jersey before you spout ignorant rants like that. In NJ, anyone who wants to run a bus service is already allowed to run it how they want (there is some enforcement of equipment standards, but not enough in my opinion).
The buses that are operated by NJ Transit used to be private; they no longer make enough money to cover operating costs because of competition from the “free” I-78 and I-280 (maintained and expanded through your income tax dollars!).
http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-examples-of-profitability.html
[…] NJ Transit Fares Have Soared While Gas Tax Stays Flat (MTR) […]
See that period of no fare increases and no gas tax increases from 1990 to 2000? Costs went up during that time, didn’t they? So how was that accomplished?
They borrowed and sold out New Jersey’s future (and, similarly, New Yorks). Once Generation Greed took control, it wrecked everything in its path. That’s the big picture, the one that matters.
James: Poor argument. “fares are collected from commuters who choose to utilize NJ Transit services”? Gas taxes are collected from drivers who choose to utilize the state’s roads. Save the tea party rhetoric; every transportation mode is subsidized in some way. Do you want to pay a toll to drive through your home town?
Privatizing transit doesn’t work. We need profitable routes to subsidize the unprofitable routes, which the private sector doesn’t do. We already have some limited private transit services in New Jersey and elsewhere. Look at cabs for instance. Saturday night in the Meatpacking District, the streets are jammed with them. But try telling that to a little old lady carrying groceries home in Newark. Her bus route isn’t profitable. She wouldn’t be able to pay a higher fare. The private sector would cancel her ride home.
Another example: the (illegal, semi-legal, and gray market) “Mexican buses” that take immigrants across the tunnels and GW. They operate because of the high demand for transportation into NYC from parts of North Jersey that are underserved by NJ Transit. They only charge a quarter to 50 cents less than the NJ Transit buses to those areas, and these are among the absolute most profitable trips in the region. Can you imagine what the fares would be like throughout the rest of the state, where demand is any lower? If competition isn’t driving prices down that significantly on the most profitable routes, I’m skeptical that prices would drop at all on average. And I’d rather have a seasoned NJ Transit bus driver in a licensed, insured bus than an unlicensed driver getting paid minimum wage, which is another area where they’re cutting costs.
James, what are gas taxes if not “[fees that] are collected from commuters who choose to utilize [their cars] and are exclusively used by [New Jersey] and do not ever leave their coffers”?
James, you may be overreaching trying to differentiate between taxes and fees when it comes to government. None other than the Tax Foundation is cool to new or increased government fees because government has a monopoly on them and there is no market mechanism to check their rise. See http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/24609.html for more on this. Besides, under your reasoning, every road, from local to freeway should be tolled up to “pay its way”.
OK, if the gas tax is off the table, how about tolling the limited access highways in NJ? You don’t need physical tollbooths built, highways have been tolled with cameras and EZ-pass.
Would allowing the counties to impose a gas tax to cover the cost of the 500 and 600 series of roads and the municipalities to impose a vehicle registration tax to cover the cost of maintaining streets work? This could allow the governor to pass the buck to the local governments while freeing up the state government to put the money into maintaining the state highways. It also could relieve some of the property tax burden.
James is nothing but a tr*ll that has “adopted” TSC, ignore him…
[…] To say it was a tough year for transit riders in New Jersey would be an understatement. The new governor opened the year by cutting state support for NJ Transit by 11%. A proposal for a 25% fare increase and huge service cuts soon followed. Thousands of riders protested at public hearings and sent messages to state politicians, and NJ Transit eventually lowered the fare hike for local bus and light rail riders to 10% while keeping the 25% hike for commuter trains and buses. But the increase was still the largest in a generation. […]
[…] tax revenue. But because the fund has been borrowed against so heavily, and the state gas tax has remained flat since 1988, debt payments will engulf 100% of the revenues by this […]
[…] This is Chris Christie’s idea of “shared sacrifice.” Graph: Tri-State Transportation Campaign […]