New Jersey highway, bridge, and transit projects are about to get a little extra funding.
The state Senate and Assembly voted to increase the Transportation Trust Fund's spending limitations by $600 million on Wednesday. That brings the funding to an annual level of $2 billion by 2024. This funding is included in the $50.6 billion state budget that the Legislature also passed.
If signed by Governor Phil Murphy, this funding increase would offset a $600 million investment made in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, with a decrease in traffic due to remote work and travel bans, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) took advantage of the decrease in traffic and accelerated highway projects and repair.
The travel bans allowed NJDOT to close highway lanes for construction earlier in the morning and later in the evening from lack of traffic. As an example, a 12-mile pavement project on Interstate 287 finished eight to nine months ahead of schedule in 2020 because DOT officials said they were able “let the contractor stay out there longer.”
As traffic volume returned later in 2020, the emphasis changed to use highway, bridge and transit construction as an economic stimulus by putting billions of dollars of construction project projects on the street to help the state economy, state transportation leaders said at the Alliance of Action state transportation conference in October 2020. The state plowed $600 million into the trust fund to accelerate that work.
After the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the emphasis changed again, seeing as the funding would include at least $13.5 billion for transportation projects in New Jersey.
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Source: NJDOT
