GSP widening a waste of $500 million ?

by: John C

Wed Mar 21, 2007 at 08:33:35 PM EDT

Traffic projections released by the NJ Turnpike Authority show that the section of the Garden State Parkway the Authority proposes to widen will be as or more congested by 2025 - the widening project's "design year" - with three lanes as it is today with two (design year is the future point which study projections look at-what will traffic be like in 2025 with the project or without it?). The numbers raise the question of why the Turnpike Authority is considering the investment of a half billion dollars in public funds in a project that will buy only a few years of relief instead of developing a real strategy for the problem of traffic congestion. ...

Data in the project EIS and public presentations by Turnpike officials show that traffic growth from 2005 to 2025 will both outpace the 50% increase in road space the project will represent, and outstrip the rated capacity of a three lane highway in various sub-segments of the widened stretch before the design year. ...

We note that managed-lane capacity additions have become relatively mainstream within the road industry. The number of agencies creating new high-occupancy toll lanes and implementing demand-management road pricing on existing roads around the United States is large and growing. ...

Managed and priced lanes are the obvious ways to ensure sustainable road capacity additions, and as a toll road agency whose roadways see some of the highest traffic volumes in the country, we should expect the Turnpike Authority to be in the forefront of such innovation. NJ DOT officials say publicly that widening highways while doing nothing else is a fool's errand in the 21st Century. When will the Turnpike Authority catch on?

TSTC views the costly Parkway widening plan as a futile waste of money.  Increased traffic capacity quickly leads to more traffic, so congestion is not relieved in the long term.  Perhaps the NJ Turnpike Authority needs to consider adding some road-managment methods that have been successfully employed in other states.