The New Jersey Department of Transportation’s 2015 draft Transportation Capital Program, which lays out the agency’s planned transportation investments for all roads, bridges and transit in the state, dedicates a lot less funding for road and bridge expansion projects than in previous years. But will this shift in priorities be short-lived?

Two of 2014’s largest expansion projects—the Route 72 Manahawkin Bay Bridge, which received $36 million in the 2014 capital program* and Route 295/42 Direct Connect, which received almost $79 million in the 2014 program—are not in the 2015 proposed document, but will be in future capital programs.

TSTC reached out to NJDOT regarding the Direct Connect project and learned that because the agency funded earlier contracts in their entirety, the next contract is scheduled for 2016. In addition, according to the draft capital program, contracts for the Manahawkin bridge project will resume in 2016 at $22 million, with plans to spend nearly $145 million on the project from 2016-2024.

The silver lining is that the 2015 draft capital program shows what future capital programs could look like if NJDOT were to focus on maintaining existing assets and cut back on large-scale expansion projects. According to TSTC’s analysis**, there are nine road or bridge expansion projects comprising about 3 percent (approximately $54 million) of this year’s proposed capital program funds, as compared to nearly 10 percent ($185 million) of the 2014 program funds.

The 2014 capital program had a higher share of funds and more total capital dollars going towards bicycle and pedestrian projects compared to 2015 (2.8 percent, or $53 million in 2014 compared to 2.5 percent, or $47.5 million in 2015).

However, the 2015 draft plan dedicates 31.5 percent of its funds (almost $600 million) to projects that preserve the state’s roads and bridges—up from 24.9 percent of its funds ($471 million) in the 2014 program. Miscellaneous road and bridge projects – small to medium-scale projects aimed at improving traffic flow—also receive a higher share of the transportation dollars in the 2015 proposed plan: 6.2 percent ($117 million) compared to 5.1 percent (about $96.5 million).

NJDOT released its final capital program for 2015 with little fanfare on July 1. Stay tuned to learn if expansion has already crept back in.

* In the 2014 program, there were two contracts for the Manahawkin Bay Bridge. TSTC considered only one of these contracts as expansion as it was for the construction of a new bridge. The other contract was considered road/bridge preservation.

** Starting in 2013, TSTC revised its analysis of the NJDOT Capital Programs in two significant ways. TSTC has gone through the DOT portion and classified each project in one of 12 categories: Road/Bridge Expansion; Bicycle/Pedestrian; Road/Bridge Preservation; Miscellaneous Road/Bridge; Transit (not NJT); Local Aid; Smart Growth; Safety; Freight; Non-DOT; PANYNJ Project Program; and Other. Non-DOT projects, not included in the analysis, total $616.5 million in the NJDOT portion of the 2015 proposed Transportation Capital Program and include the Port Authority’s Goethals Bridge replacement and the Bayonne Bridge Navigational Clearance Project. 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 convey a clearer picture of NJDOT’s planned spending.