NJDOT releases proposed Fiscal Year 2010 Capital Plan

A lot of attention has been paid in recent months to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and it’s easy to understand why. Through the Recovery Act, New Jersey has received over $1 billion in stimulus funds for highway, bridge and transit projects. We are building, designing or acquiring right-of-way for 40 projects throughout the state. Those projects will create jobs and help pull New Jersey out of this national recession.

It’s important to remember that the work we’re doing with the stimulus money is in addition to – not instead of – the critical capital investments we make every year in our transportation system.

Last week Governor Corzine and NJDOT submitted to the Legislature our $3.6 billion capital plan for Fiscal Year 2010, which begins July 1. The plan includes $2.2 billion for NJDOT and $1.4 billion for NJ TRANSIT.

The NJDOT portion of the budget includes $614 million to repair, inspect, rehabilitate, or replace state and local bridges.

It includes $176 million for highway resurfacing, with much of that money to be spent on deteriorated sections of our interstates.

It includes $73 million for safety programs such as Safe Corridors, Safe Routes to School, and pedestrian safety initiatives.

In addition, it includes about $419 million to relieve highway congestion by making improvements to infrastructure and to our incident response and traffic management systems.

When details of the federal stimulus bill emerged, many local officials expressed disappointment that it did not include more money for local projects.

This plan recognizes those concerns and provides $50 million more in local aid than in Fiscal Year 2009. Specifically, the plan will provide an additional $25 million in municipal aid and $25 million more in county aid for both municipalities and counties.

This enhancement of local aid will enable our communities and counties to create more jobs by resurfacing roads, replacing bridge decks, reconfiguring intersections, and making other improvements to our local transportation infrastructure.

NJ TRANSIT’s portion of the capital plan calls for enhancing the state’s bus routes by modernizing vehicles, improving terminals, expanding express service, and erecting new signs and shelters.

It would enhance the rail system by improving stations, replacing track, upgrading signals and security systems, rehabilitating bridges, repairing overhead power lines and electric substations, and continue the acquisition of the very popular multi-level rail cars.

The program also would advance several projects critical to future expansion, including the Mass Transit Tunnel beneath the Hudson River, the Hudson Bergen Light Rail extension to Eighth Street in Bayonne, the Northern Branch, the Lackawanna Cutoff to Andover, and the Passaic-Bergen rail project.

The proposed capital plan would be funded with $1.6 billion from the Transportation Trust Fund. That money, plus $239 million from other sources, would be leveraged to bring in $1.73 billion in federal funding.

Our transportation assets are our greatest economic strength. Maintaining, repairing and expanding them will ensure that their capability to meet the demands of 21st century New Jersey and promote our long-term economic vitality.

If we want to stay competitive with other states in the region and other regions in the country, we must make decisive investments in our roads, rails and bridges every year.

With this capital budget, we propose to do just that.