Background: From August 2015 through December 2016, I wrote a weekly transportation column called “Road Sage.” It eventually ended as I switched beats, but this column came during the height of my transportation coverage. NJ Transit workers came 24 hours away from a strike that would have put New Jersey at a standstill. I wrote this column after the deal had been reached, inspired by a Chris Christie presser in which he seemed uncommitted to making any real changes going forward.
I spent the tail end of last week holed up inside a Hilton hotel in Newark, wondering where it all went wrong.
A few feet away, a gaggle of lawyers, union leaders and NJ Transit executives was quarantined in conference rooms trying to hammer out a deal. And hammer it out they did, announcing the news on Friday night just as reporters began canceling their weekend plans.
But it’s an 8½-year deal retroactive as of July 2011 — meaning there’s less than three years until it expires, and even less than that until negotiations start again.
Unless something changes, I bet we’ll be stuck there again – holed up inside a Newark hotel, waiting for NJ Transit to hammer out another deal.
In next year’s budget, Christie nearly quadrupled funding for NJ Transit, up to more than $127 million. That’s good, but keep in mind that it comes after nearly a decade of deep cuts and still leaves the agency with less than half of what it had in 2007.
What about next year? And what about the next governor?
Every single year, NJ Transit is subject to the whims of party politics and partisan politicians, a very small percentage of whom actually rely on public transportation.
The solution has always been dedicated funding — something like a five- or 10-year plan that will set funding in place for the foreseeable future.
This has a lot of benefits, mainly that NJ Transit’s decision-makers don’t have to wait until February to shuffle the deck and figure out how to make ends meet. If we’re lucky, they may even have a chance to plan for the, gasp!, long term.
“You need some type of funding where it’s not coming down to June 30 and you don’t know how much money is left in the account,” SMART-TD Local 60 General Chairman Stephen Burkert told me a few weeks ago, as I tried to get to the bottom of how the nation’s third-largest railroad was actually on the verge of a shutdown. “There is no long-range planning at NJ Transit. It’s tough to look under the couch cushions to pay the bill.”
Burkert isn't alone. Over the last year, nearly every transportation nonprofit, advocate and expert has pointed to dedicated funding as the best way to plan for the future of NJ Transit. With dedicated funding, the agency can stop relying on raids of its capital budget to pay for operating expenses.
"But Mike," you’re saying. "I don’t care about that. All I care about is how much I have to fork over to get my monthly pass."
With dedicated funding in place every year, NJ Transit will know how much it needs from riders years ahead of time. Remember: Even Christie said that fare hikes to cover costs are “responsible.”
The goal is to keep them to a minimum, and that’s what dedicated funding allows. A small increase on a regular basis softens the blow, as opposed to 9 percent (2015) or 22 percent (2010) in one fell swoop.
Seems pretty agreeable, right?
Last week, a reporter asked Christie if he’d ever consider dedicated funding for NJ Transit. It was a good question and the right time to ask it, as the governor was in the midst of his best Ric Flair impression, soaking up the Friday night airtime, still in the afterglow an hour after the NJ Transit contract was announced.
He cracked that Christie smirk and curtly replied, “No.”