New Jersey voters support a controversial Turnpike expansion near the Holland Tunnell and think that NJ Transit shouldn’t be tapping into the transportation trust fund to cover operating expenses – according to the results of the latest FDU Poll.
The results of the poll, sponsored by the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey, included perhaps one big surprise: There was little in the way of partisan divides on these transportation issues, with broad agreement across party and regional lines.
Dan Cassino, the executive director of the FDU Poll, said transportation is one of the few non-partisan issues in the state.
“(It) doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, everyone’s train gets delayed the same, and everyone waits in the same traffic,” he said.
The first question in the series asked Jersey voters about the state’s use of the transportation trust fund to support NJ Transit’s operating costs, despite rules that are supposed to dedicate that funding to infrastructure and equipment improvements.
Since 1990, more than $7 billion dollars in money that was supposed to have been spent on infrastructure and improvements have been diverted to operating costs for NJ Transit, largely as a way to avoid fare hikes while giving the agency the money it needs to continue existing services.
Direct state aid to NJ Transit was more than $500 million per year for most of the 1990s but fell to an average of around $400 million per year in the 2000s and cratered to less than $100 million per year during the Christie Administration. During the pandemic, direct state aid went back up to historic levels but has since returned to baseline levels of a little more than $100 million per year.
A new corporate tax surcharge passed this year, which would apply to businesses with more than $10 million in profits and is expected to eventually bring in around $800 million per year for NJ Transit. This amount is just enough to cover the agency’s projected budget shortfall and could serve to reduce the amount that the agency takes from the transportation trust fund.
Anthony Russo, president of CIANJ, said the results show the importance of transportation.
“In the most densely populated state in the nation, commuters and commerce have to move and our roads must be able to accommodate the flow of goods and commuters in a way that is sustainable and productive,” he said. “The expansion of the turnpike will allow us to meet that goal.
“People understand that we need new infrastructure.”
When asked to choose between using money from the transportation trust fund for infrastructure or operating costs, two out of three N.J. voters (66 percent) say that the money should be used just for infrastructure and equipment. Just nine percent say that it should be used for operating expenses, and 18 percent volunteered that it should be used for a combination of the two.
There is no significant party divide on the issue, with 66 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans saying that the transportation trust fund money should be used just for infrastructure. Differences across regions of the state are similarly small.
“Voters don’t like budget gimmicks,” Cassino said. “Once people take note of the shenanigans that are going on with NJ Transit funding, they’re not happy about it.”
The second question about transportation controversies asked about the expansion of the section of the NJ Turnpike leading to the Holland Tunnel. The expansion – which is now expected to cost more than $10 billion – would increase the number of lanes running from Newark Airport, and past Jersey City before meeting up with the Holland Tunnel.
Proponents of the project argue that it is needed to accommodate the increased number of trucks coming from the state’s ports, and that the bridges that would be expanded need to be replaced anyway. Opponents worry about environmental effects and note that the project would do nothing to improve traffic into the Holland Tunnel, which would have the same number of lanes going into New York.
“The Turnpike expansion is overwhelmingly popular which is no surprise given how bad traffic has become post COVID,” Russo said. “We need to update our infrastructure to reflect the massive increases in shipping that we’ve seen.”
Still, while the expansion has been politically contentious, 58 percent of New Jersey voters favor the project, with Democrats (63 percent) being slightly more likely to support it than Republicans (56 percent). As might be expected, voters in the northeastern portion of the state (65 percent) are more likely to support it than those in most other parts of the state, though support in South Jersey is surprisingly high (64 percent).
“The long-term solution for traffic is always going to be a mixture of mass transit and targeted road improvements,” Cassino said. “But we have to do something, and since expansions of mass transit aren’t coming, expanding roads is just about the only thing we can do.”
