Crumbling Infrastructure Watch

This morning, New Jersey commuters trying to get to the Holland Tunnel found themselves navigating a maze of detours and major delays as a key route was shuttered.

The emergency closure was the result of concrete falling from the covered roadway on Route 139 which is one of two major highways leading to the tunnel. Emergency repairs are underway, but the fact is that the roadway needs significant repairs. Replacement of the structure is more than needed as concrete continues to fall away from overhead.

Failing to invest in basic maintenance and upkeep plays a role in this. Heavy traffic pounds on these structures on a daily basis forming cracks that allow water to seep into the structures and begin the process of separating concrete from the reinforcing steel.

The closure in New Jersey is just the latest in a string of infrastructure failures across the state. Water main failures are a common occurrence and one that wastes a key resource and disrupts business in the affected areas. Water utilities and municipalities that manage their own water supplies are also failing to maintain their infrastructure - repairing emergency water main breaks rather than proactively replacing the oldest sections of mains and sewers to upgrade the system.

Heck, Newark has hundreds of fire hydrants that are inoperable because they lack sufficient water pressure or are otherwise damaged in some fashion. That affects public safety and yet there's an insufficient budget to address the concerns.

Far too many people want to see low taxes but ignore that the costs for maintaining an aging infrastructure have grown exponentially requires a growing budget to address those needs.

In New York City, the mayoral race has given little more than lip service to infrastructure and mass transit, which are keys to economic development and community vitality. The City has failed to restore funding to the MTA to help fund capital construction programs and has forced the agency to borrow to make ends meet. That has to change, or else the agency will find itself managing a system that increasingly is falling behind its attempts to get the system into a state of good repair. Hurricane Sandy exposed significant problems with the infrastructure, and not enough effort has gone in to make sure that the lessons are learned and applied to the system.

NYS Department of Transportation To Install Barriers On Bronx River Parkway

The New York State Department of Transportation has begun installing new concrete barriers along the stretch of the Bronx River Parkway where seven people were killed when their vehicle careened off the viaduct and crashed more than 60 feet to the ground. Two other segments along the Parkway will get similar treatment.

The 2-foot, 8-inch concrete slabs will be placed on the righthand side of the travel lanes to block a vehicle from continuing on toward the existing fence and vaulting off the elevated roadway.

The barriers will be the same as the concrete median that separates northbound and southbound traffic lanes on the parkway.

Work began Wednesday morning.

The barriers will go up on the viaduct over the Bronx Zoo and two others that cross over East Tremont Ave. and the Amtrak tracks.

State Transportation Commissioner Joan McDonald said her agency “shares community concerns about the safety of the Bronx River Parkway.”

It's better late than never, and it is far too sad to consider that these developments would not have occurred had seven people not been killed when their vehicle careened over the side of a viaduct on the Bronx River Parkway.

Yet, I can't help but be concerned that the addition of the concrete barrier will actually make things worse - narrowing the already narrow lanes even further. From how the report is worded, the new barriers will actually sit inside the concrete curb that helped fling the vehicle into the air rather than atop the curb - making it more unlikely that a vehicle could overtop the safety barriers and crash to the ground below.

Also, why did it take this particular accident to get action when there was similar crashes along this same stretch over the past several years that highlighted the importance of improving the safety barriers.

Obsolete and Dangerous Infrastructure Contributed To Deadly Bronx River Parkway Crash

Over the weekend there was a deadly accident on the Bronx River Parkway adjacent to the Bronx Zoo. Seven people were killed when their vehicle somehow managed to cross four lanes of traffic and over the side barrier and crashed more than 60 feet below into a storage yard at the zoo.

Local politicians are clamoring for action and wondering why the elevated section has high curbs and insufficiently high railings to prevent vehicles from careening off the roadway.

A perfect storm of factors — including a measly 4-foot guardrail and a concrete curb bizarrely placed along a section of the Bronx River Parkway — could have contributed to the crash that killed seven relatives there Sunday, experts said.

“Highways are not supposed to have curbs,” said Robert Sinclair, spokesman for AAA New York, referring to the 2-foot-high ledge along the right side of the highway that the SUV struck, sending it over the guardrail before it plunged 60 feet onto Bronx Zoo turf.

“And not only is there a curb there, [but] it’s particularly high,” he said.
In addition, the guardrail “would need to be higher for that area because you’re trying to keep vehicles from flying off because of the 60-foot drop. And you’ve got that catapulting curb there.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. also zeroed in on the 4-foot-high rails, calling for state officials to reassess their height in that spot.

“I believe strongly if the railing was higher, at the very worst we would have had a very bad car accident and not a vehicle going over and killing seven,’’ Diaz said.
“We [need] them at least 10 feet or more so this doesn’t happen again.’’

He said he also asked authorities, “Why is the rest of the parkway always smooth and [in] the elevated portion there is always potholes?”

There are indeed a host of reasons why this roadway is so dangerous - and those reasons aren't confined to the Bronx River Parkway viaduct in question.

The same issues can be raised of a stretch of the Cross Bronx Expressway where the viaduct seems to roll up and down by several feet - especially in and around the expansion joints and the drains along the center of the highway. It is all too easy for a vehicle to lose control under those circumstances.

It comes down to the fact that many highways in the area, and indeed around the nation, are obsolete and need major reconstruction or repair to bring them up to a state of good repair. Patching potholes on these structures is a temporary fix - it would take a reconstruction to provide a significant upgrade to the facilities.

However, there are some fixes that could improve safety along the Bronx River Parkway - though drivers might not necessarily like it.

Reduce the number of lanes of traffic from three to two in each direction and provide a breakdown lane that can give drivers a chance to correct themselves. Work should not have to wait until the next decade to reconstruct the highway. This is a stretch that has already taken lives due to poor and obsolete design. We shouldn't have to see more lives lost on this stretch due to the fact that the money can't be found sooner to rebuild the highway so that it is safer for all who use it.

This horrific tale once again highlights the need to maintain and upgrade existing infrastructure to current design standards to reduce the chances for deadly accidents that could be prevented using modern design techniques that keep vehicles on elevated structures and eliminate obstacles that could launch vehicles over the side.

Now Is Time For New Jersey To Purchase Properties Along Route 17 Corridor

Route 17 through Bergen County is one of the busiest corridors in the state, and traffic congestion is a constant companion to drivers on the stretch between Route 4 in Paramus at the Garden State Plaza and Essex Street in Hackensack. While the rest of Route 17 is a three lane divided highway with paved shoulders leading to businesses, this particular stretch is only two lanes wide, and in some places there aren't shoulders.

Thus, when there are accidents in the area, it can cause massive backups and delays.

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Plans to expand the highway to three lanes in each direction, along with building modern highway overpasses have been floated in the past, but the time is ripe to go ahead with the project now.

Several businesses along the stretch have gone out of business recently, and for sale/lease signs are posted. That would make purchase by the state or localities for the purpose of expanding the highway easier - and less costly.

After all, one of the most expensive portions of the project isn't construction - it's the acquisition costs of property along the highway right of way.

Yet, the mayor of Rochelle Park is opposed to the $200 million proposal. He argues that the expansion would adversely affect traffic in town. That makes little sense, particularly because traffic congestion increases pollution from vehicles sitting in traffic each time the traffic slows down (an all too common occurrence.

In particular, the town claims it would lose $1 million in ratable properties annually as a result of the expansion. That seems particularly far-fetched considering that the properties along the right of way are in several cases marginal properties to begin with and have had difficulty in securing leases. Traffic congestion reduces the chances that people can utilize those same businesses and while several homes would need to be obtained through eminent domain, the benefit to the town as a result of eliminating the traffic bottleneck would mean that drivers on side streets would see improved flow because drivers wouldn't need to seek alternative routes to avoid congestion on Route 17.

Some of the same businesses that sought to block the project have themselves gone out of business or relocated due to the poor economic environment.

If You Thought the FAA Tax Debacle Was Bad, Wait For Forthcoming The Gas Tax Mess

If you thought that the FAA tax funding mess was bad (and it was resolved today with Congress finally extending the tax that funds FAA operations for another couple of weeks), wait for the mess that will ensue with the coming expiration of the federal gas tax.

The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon expires at the end of September. In order to keep the gas tax, lawmakers would need to vote to extend the highway funding bill, which is what the gas tax is tied to.

There are no official efforts to scrap the tax yet but as first noted in the journal Politco, momentum appears to be moving in that direction.

A bill was recently introduced by Senate Republicans that would allow states to opt out of the federal highway program. The highway program uses $32 billion each year collected by the gas tax, plus a handful of smaller fees and some borrowing to distribute some $50 billion a year to the states for road construction, maintenance and mass transit projects.

That represents about 28% of all road and transit spending nationwide, with the rest coming from states or towns in the form of tolls, registration and user fees, state gas taxes or their general funds.

Some people will question why a federal tax needs to be imposed and then redistributed to the states for work on highway projects.

For starters, we're talking about an interstate highway system and mass transit projects (many of which are also interstate in nature). Transportation is by its nature generally interstate commerce (federally designated Interstate highways, federal routes, etc.). Shifting the burden back to the states means that some of those critical routes will not get sufficient funding to maintain and/or improve roads, bridges, or mass transit operations.

Is the current system cumbersome? Yes. Does it shift money away from states that need such funds to those that don't? Possibly (there's a funding formula that always seems to shortchange states that have built up significant infrastructure and need to maintain it).

Yet, there are some interests that are looking to have the gas tax raised - and they're not the usual suspects. GM and the US Chamber of Commerce want to see the gas tax raised by $1 per gallon, which would go to infrastructure improvements.

With the current economic situation, that would be a no-go. Even in good economic times, an increase of $1 per gallon would be untenable and impossible because gas prices remain significantly above what they were just a few years ago (and would put New Jersey at above $4.65 per gallon - it's currently about $3.65 in Northern NJ). That would not only be a significant drag on the economy, but it would be even more detrimental to lower income taxpayers and businesses that are already hard hit by high energy costs.

The practical costs of not extending the tax would be similar to the problems with the FAA stalemate - a cessation of vital infrastructure projects and a slowdown in improvements that are vital to keeping transportation flowing around the country.

NJ Toll Takers Provide Water Cooler Fodder

I haven't had to interact with a toll collector in the New York metro area for years once I got EZ-Pass installed, but apparently a few people in the region are incapable of understanding that EZ-Pass is quicker, reduces congestion, and means that you don't have to deal with sleazy toll collectors.

The Smoking Gun initiated a freedom of information request with the Turnpike Authority, which released hundreds of complaints lodged against the collectors on the Garden State Parkway and the NJ Turnpike. More than a few of the complaints related to collectors soliciting drivers.

About 10% of the complaints are investigated, but in nearly every one of those cases, disciplinary action is taken.

With electronic toll collection being in widespread use around the country (those in the Northeast use the EZ Pass system), the ability to phase out toll booths and use high speed toll collection is available. It would greatly reduce congestion at toll plazas and reduce emissions that result from traffic jams at those crossings resulting from drivers backing up lanes due to having to pay cash for passage. One way to make sure that people have access to EZ Pass would be to distribute the passes along with vehicle registrations since the passes are tied to specific vehicles.

The Worst Commutes In the US

The Daily Beast has the 75 worst commutes in the US, and some of them are truly beastly. In the New York metro area, the Cross Bronx Expressway rings in at number six, while the I-95 stretch in Bridgeport comes in at eight. That's it for the NYC metro area, which strikes me as odd given that news reports consistently put traffic jams on the Gowanus/Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the Long Island Expressway, and the approach roads to the Lincoln Tunnel as daily traffic nightmares.

What this list seems to do is show bad commutes on roads that can have clear running times, as opposed to those that are almost always jammed based on the methodologies used:

Our first step was ranking the metropolitan areas with the worst rush-hour congestion. The order is based on the peak hour Travel Time Index (TTI) for the metropolitan area each highway is in. TTI is a measure of how much longer it takes to complete a road journey during peak congestion hours compared to free-flow hours. (Peak hours are defined as 6 a.m. to 10a.m., and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.) Speeds during non-peak hours are used by INRIX to establish this free-flow baseline.

After determining the 75 worst metro areas, we then found the worst highway in each, defined as the most hours of bottleneck congestion, as reported by INRIX. The rankings then provide a still deeper look—the worst segment listed for the worst segment listed for the worst highway in each area.

So, which made the worst commute in the nation? That would be the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles, which had 686 weekly hours of bottleneck congestion.

Building more lanes isn't going to solve the problems in most areas, since they've already tried that approach. Mass transit doesn't work unless the densities are there and the routes go from where people live to where they work on a sufficient schedule. Telecommuting isn't always an option, particularly for retail and service oriented businesses where face time is critical. Flexible work schedules might spread out the commutes over a wider time, but that has often resulted in more congestion for longer times during the day.

There are no easy answers to this vexing problem.