A Colossal Waste

It's been a while since I've railed against New Jersey Transit or New Jersey in general. That's about to change.

I've commented in the past over the boondoggle known as the Secaucus Junction, or Secaucus Transfer, a $450 million project that went over its budget by 100%. Well, alongside that project is a New Jersey Turnpike interchange project that weaves around the Transfer to create a new interchange - Exit 15X.

The Junction does the job of linking all but one of the New Jersey Transit lines so that people in North Jersey can travel to South Jersey simply by going through the Junction. Except that the entire system is now saddled by the huge cost overruns, there is no parking at the station, and limited bus service to the station. In other words, the entire project, which was predicated on retail and office buildings being built over and around the Junction, have not materialized. We're talking a huge waste of money when a simpler solution could have been instituted that would have given the New Jersey Transit more flexibility in their capital and operating budgets.

Now comes word that the interchange is going to be the exit to nowhere, because no one really needs it. In fact, the current administration considers it a waste and it was a carryover of the McGreevey Administration.

And some are wondering if the state will ever be reimbursed for $140 million that Allied Junction's developers were supposed to chip in for the interchange and related infrastructure - but never did.

"The irony is, the people who ride the turnpike are subsidizing themselves to be stuck in more traffic," Sierra Club-New Jersey Director Jeff Tittel said.

Even current New Jersey Turnpike Authority officials say Interchange 15X was an ill conceived boondoggle from a previous administration.

"The deal certainly wasn't good from a turnpike standpoint," spokesman Joseph Orlando said. "By the time this administration took over ... we had already fronted $78 million to the project. What do you do at that point? Stop?"

No politicians stood up and questioned this. No government watchdogs questioned this? Inconceivable.

And yet, we're hearing that New Jersey needs to raise gas taxes to get its transportation trust fund refunded to appropriate levels, and there are other taxes being considered in the future to pay for transportation needs. Well, when we spend hundreds of millions on wasteful and unnecessary projects, what do you expect?