Comparison of the New Jersey Department of Transportation’s 2013 Final Capital Program with the agency’s 2014 Proposed Capital Program released a few months ago shows that more money is going towards pedestrian, bike and transit projects—but not much. And, while New Jersey still has the oldest bridges in the region and half of the state’s roads are deficient, the share of dollars going toward fixing and maintaining New Jersey’s roads and bridges dropped in NJDOT’s Proposed Capital Program for 2014 compared to the 2013 Final Capital Program.

While the drop is slight, the needs are massive. Instead, NJDOT must shift the still-too-high investment in new road and bridge capacity towards fix-it-first. In both documents, less than 30 percent of the Agency’s planned spending goes towards maintenance and repair of existing roadway infrastructure. This is especially problematic because, according to the recent Facing our Future report, New Jersey will need to spend $21.3 billion from 2014 to 2018 to address key transportation infrastructure needs — not to mention the need for resiliency upgrades on the roads that are most vulnerable to damage from future storms.

Proposed funds dedicated to expanding the road and bridge network across the State will drop by almost 18 percent from 11.7 percent to 9.6 percent of the total program — if the final version remains unchanged from the Proposed Capital Program. With 66 percent of New Jersey’s roadways rated as poor, and 36 percent of bridges structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, dollars dedicated to expansion must drop even further, and dollars towards maintenance will need to increase.

The proposed capital program builds on NJDOT’s recent leadership on advancing more bikeable and walkable communities—from encouraging municipalities to enact Complete Streets policies to including bicycle/pedestrian components on many of its road and bridge projects. According to TSTC’s analysis, 21 percent of dollars going to road or bridge projects (expansion, preservation and miscellaneous road or bridge projects) will have bicycle/pedestrian components. Unfortunately, because the estimated cost of project components is not broken out more transparently in the Capital Program—an area where NJDOT’s reporting can be improved—a more detailed spending analysis on bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure within road or bridge projects cannot be done at this time.

Other positive findings:

• Bicycle/pedestrian projects will receive a somewhat higher share of the Capital Program’s dollars in the upcoming year than these kinds of projects did in 2013.
• New Jersey Transit (NJT) is set to receive a slightly higher percentage of the entire Capital Program’s dollars in 2014 than it did in 2013, up 2.4 percent (from 37.3 percent in 2013 to 38.2 percent in 2014).

However, given that the New Jersey Department of Transportation, five counties and 61 municipalities have passed Complete Streets resolutions or policies, bicycle/pedestrian projects should receive a much higher share than what is proposed.

As TSTC has noted in the past, just under 20 percent of NJDOT’s Capital Program is paid for with funds from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. These are funds that the Port Authority intended to use for the cancelled Access to the Region’s Core project and are now being used to fund NJDOT projects instead. These Port Authority payments will end in 2016, creating a massive funding hole if other sources are not identified, an issue that goes unaddressed in the proposed Capital Program.

The Proposed Capital Program is contingent on the Legislature passing the budget, which took place last month, so the Final Capital Program should be released soon.

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*This year, TSTC has revised its analysis of the 2013 Final and 2014 Proposed Capital Programs in two significant ways. TSTC has gone through the DOT portion and classified each project in one of 11 categories: road/bridge expansion; bicycle/pedestrian; road/bridge preservation; miscellaneous road/bridge; transit (not NJT); local aid; smart growth; safety; freight; non-DOT project and other. Projects that are “non-DOT” are not included in the analysis. These projects total $624 million in the NJDOT portion of the Capital Program and include the Port Authority’s Goethals Bridge replacement. NJDOT describes these projects as “neither NJDOT nor NJTRANSIT –administered, but must be listed in the program because federal funds are attached to them.” By taking these projects out of the analysis, TSTC is able to paint a more clear picture of NJDOT’s planned spending.