Trucks vs. Toll Hikes

Increased fees could drive more rigs to local roads

1/21/2008

By Scott Goldstein, NJBIZ

STATEHOUSE

If tolls rise in 2010 and beyond, as Gov. Jon Corzine is proposing, more trucks would move to free roads, potentially causing congestion on the alternate routes and headaches for many mayors who say too many trucks already drive on side roads.

“There are some transportation routes on secondary roads that still get an inordinate amount of traffic,” says William Dressel, head of the League of Municipalities, which represents mayors, town council members and town administrators. “We fear the problems we are experiencing now will become compounded once these toll increases are put in place.”

Case in point: Route 206, which runs through commercial districts in Princeton, Lawrence and other communities, has become a popular thoroughfare for truckers who want to stay off the New Jersey Turnpike, according to Dressel. Route 29 is another highway that cuts though community business districts, including one in Lambertville, which has been fighting truck traffic for years.

Matthew Wright, president of the New Jersey Motor Truck Association, says other roads that could get more truck traffic include Route 295, which parallels the Turnpike in South Jersey, Routes 1 and 9 and Route 31 between Trenton and White Township in Warren County. “The last time the Turnpike raised tolls, in 1991, it was a 100 percent hike for trucks and around 20 percent of truck traffic left roadways for a period of time. Some of it never came back,” says Wright, whose trade group opposes the toll hikes.

Corzine is aware of the issue. “It’s already a problem,” he told a gathering of mayors at the Statehouse last week. “There is no question there have been diversions.” The administration says it expects a 10 percent diversion rate when the first toll hikes kick in.

But the administration insists that the Turnpike remains the fastest and most efficient way to cross the state. Kris Kolluri, the state Department of Transportation commissioner, says the Turnpike will get even faster when the state widens it between interchanges 6 and 8A—a $2 billion project that would be funded under Corzine’s restructuring plan. As for the prospect of finding faster alternate routes at rush hour, Kolluri said during a briefing for reporters, “Good luck.”

The state this week is instituting new regulations that will require double-trailer trucks and those at least eight-and-a-half feet wide to stay off state highways and local roads unless they are making deliveries or looking for food, fuel or repairs.

Dressel says the League of Municipalities embraces the regulations but notes that enforcement could be an issue. Only state police have the authority to stop trucks and ask for their destinations, he says.

David DelVecchio, the mayor of Lambertville, a scenic riverside town that has struggled to regulate trucks on Route 29, says the state must “either up the enforcement of the state police or give local officials the ability to enforce truck laws.” Local police can only ask truckers their destinations if they are stopped for a moving violation, he says.

“We’re not anti-commerce or anti-business,” DelVecchio says. “People have to be able to get their goods, but the goal is to make sure trucks are on the roads where they belong. When trucks deliver, they must use the most direct route back to the national network.”

Wright says the new regulations won’t change traffic patterns because the big trucks on secondary roads are making deliveries to grocery stores or big retailers like Lowe’s and Target. “Drivers know not to go on those roads because the congestion is a natural impediment,” Wright says of roads like Routes 1 and 9.

According to Gail Toth, executive director of the Motor Truck Association, the state is “legislating behavior that already exists.”

Under Corzine’s fiscal restructuring plan, tolls on the Turnpike, The Garden State Parkway and the Atlantic City Expressway would rise up to 50 percent for cars and trucks every four years between 2010 and 2022, on top of annual adjustments for inflation.

A 35-cent toll would be added to a portion of Route 440—a proposal that last week came under particularly heavy attack. The increases would repay investors who buy $38 billion of revenue bonds that would be sold by a new nonprofit, public benefit corporation.

The state’s toll roads are currently among the cheapest in the nation. The Turnpike, at a toll cost of 6 cents per mile, ranks 29th most expensive out of the nation’s 58, according to data from AAA Mid-Atlantic. The Parkway and Expressway, at 4 cents per mile, rank 43rd out of 57.

“Fifty percent of the Turnpike revenues come from people outside of the state, so we are sharing it with somebody other than New Jerseyans,” the governor told mayors last week. “Fact is, these are people using roads.”

A single 18-wheeler truck applies wear-and-tear to the roads equal to 9,600 cars, says Corzine, creating potholes that the state fills and benefiting from snow removal that the state provides. “I think [truckers] should help pay for these things,” he says. “For a long time, we have been subsidizing them.”