I watched this video put out by the Governor's office after sitting in the traffic heading south on the turnpike over the weekend, where they talk about what is being done to widen the Turnpike and Parkway:Here's more about the Turnpike section of the project:
State officials broke ground Thursday in East Windsor on a $2.7 billion project that will widen the New Jersey Turnpike, one of the nation's busiest highways.
The project will increase the number of lanes from 6 and 10 to 12 and keep the lanes divided along a 25-mile stretch of the roadway between Cranbury and the Pennsylvania Turnpike interchange near Mansfield. Another 10 miles of roadway will be expanded from 10 lanes to 12 between Cranbury and East Brunswick.
Presently, traffic frequently backs up along the stretch that will be widened as 12 lanes are reduced to 10 and than 6. The turnpike carries an average 680,000 vehicles daily and is a major East Coast link between New York and Boston in the north and Philadelphia and Washington in the south.
The project will add 170 miles of new roadway. Construction is expected cause traffic delays until the widening is completed in 2014 but actual work will not begin until August.
That would be where I enjoyed virtually parking momentarily. But the Sierra club came out with what has become a regular release criticizing the Turnpike widening:
"This project in its current form is the opposite of smart growth; it is dumb growth and a huge waste of money," NJ Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel said.
"All we're doing is turning the Parkway into a bigger, more expensive parking lot," NJ Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel said. "This project will create two 50 mile long ribbons of asphalt, which will pave over the Pinelands and environmentally sensitive coastal areas, will make sprawl and traffic worse and take money away from the areas that actually need it."
As much as I'd like to take a train sometimes, it's just not possible from where I am. I've said before, I can't get a direct train to New York from South Jersey. I couldn't even get to the Hudson Tunnel line they're building (which the Sierra Club opposed) without driving north first. So while people debate the merits of the projects and until there is expanded train service or widened roads, you can learn about where the traffic is because the state operates the 511 service and you can see live video on the web.
On May 10, there was a fatal car crash on the Garden State Parkway when a car slammed into the Egg Harbor Toll Plaza and burst into Flames. Footage of the crash was somehow released and made its way onto the internet on sites like Youtube and Liveleak.com, aired on the local news and was on the Atlantic City Press Website.
The NJ Turnpike Authority is investigating how the footage was released, but they had asked the sites to take down the video and LiveLeak.com co-founder Hayden Hewitt said that the website would not take down the video...
"It's a newsworthy video, and it's definitely worth discussing," said Hewitt.
"If they can give us a legal takedown order, we will obviously have to take this down," Hewitt said.
The Turnpike Authority spokesman wasn't very pleased by that response...
"Do these people have families? It is just wrong to have this posted," Orlando said.
The Turnpike Authority planned to examine legal options in the coming week, Orlando said. Meanwhile, an investigation continued into how surveillance footage ended up on the Internet.
"The video shouldn't have been released to begin with. We would like to know how that happened," Orlando said.
Youtube has not responded to the request, the tv station says they got no complaints and the AC Press voluntarily pulled the video down from their site. So what do you think, is it newsworthy and worth discussing? It it flaunting tragedy to get attention? I'll put the link below the fold and you can decide for yourself, but i must admit i was conflicted as to whether to post it because if it was someone close to me, i would not want to have to see it.
The NJ Turnpike Authority plans to widen a 50-mile segment of the Garden State Parkway between Toms River and Somers Point. According to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the widened section will be crowded shortly after it is built:
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.
