Statement of Greg Meyer
Tri-State Transportation Campaign

NJTPA Public Hearing on Enhanced Planning
July 27, 1999

I am New Jersey Coordinator for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The Campaign is a consortium of thirteen transit advocacy, planning, and environmental organizations working to reform transportation policy, including in New Jersey the New Jersey Environmental Lobby, New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, and Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic and more than 100 affiliate groups who have agreed to pursue our central mission, including the NJ League of Women Voters, the American Lung Association of NJ, and the NJ State League of Municipalities. We are regular public participants at the board and committee meetings of the NJTPA, and see part of our mission as being an informational conduit to other interested parties on transportation decisions taking place in northern New Jersey.

Overall, I am here to express our support for the NJTPA as a publicly accountable, accessible agency working to implement the goals of TEA-21, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, and State acts and plans. NJTPA is succeeding in carrying out the cooperative, comprehensive, and coordinated planning process mandated by TEA-21.

Authority

First, we wish to comment on an issue of immediate concern, which is the authority of NJTPA vis-à-vis the state. When NJTPA was formed, the Governor retained veto power over the minutes of its Board, thus giving the State the ultimate (and possibly unlawful) power to reject any action of the Board. At the current time, such veto power has created a standoff that could lead to suspension of NJTPA's operating budget in the next fiscal year. We urge the federal government to step in and delineate the autonomy to which the MPO is entitled - over TIP amendments, over the Unified Planning and Work Program, and over staff issues. NJTPA constitutes a representative body of regional officials - decision-making power should rest here, not the Governor's office.

Public Comment

NJTPA is extremely helpful in sharing information and in soliciting public comment. Staff provide data, project documents, and explanations to the public upon request. Meeting schedules are publicly announced to newspapers as well as more unconventional venues (such as our weekly new bulletin, Mobilizing the Region). Staff is constantly expanding its database of interested parties. Public hearings, such as this one, are held in the evening. All public meetings involving action items are open to the public, and the public may speak before each item is voted on. (Though it is often unclear to participants when they may speak at public meetings, or whether Board members take these views into account).

While the procedures for public comment are in place, it remains unclear when and how public comment is incorporated into the TIP, the Regional Transportation Plan, and other documents. Amendments based on public comment appear to be haphazard, and often predicated on limited information flow from NJDOT, NJ Transit, and other agencies. To our knowledge, NJTPA has no criteria by which public comment is deemed convincing or voluminous enough to warrant amendment. In addition, agency responses to comments in TIP public comment appendices often simply reject the comments of the public without adequate justification, or acknowledge them without action. We recommend the NJTPA adopt clear, measurable standards to determine whether and when a public comment warrants an amendment to a project, TIP, or other item, and hold itself and members agencies to those standards.

In addition, NJTPA seems to have no mechanism by which it may ask a member agency to reconsider a project already in the TIP or the Study and Development pool. NJTPA needs to take a more proactive role in determining project prioritization. The key lever in this relationship would be the CMS process. Rather than simply evaluate CMS studies undertaken by member agencies, NJTPA should actively work with project managers from day one to push for a thoroughgoing alternatives analysis on a regional scale.

Once projects appear in the TIP, it is very difficult to question the need or the proposed solution: it's a done deal. But the public, if it gets involved at all, often does only when projects are nearing completion and the exact localized effects are felt. NJTPA should act early and often to ensure the involvement of interested and affected parties during the Study and Development phase of project development. And responses along the lines of that received by the Hudson Alliance for Rational Transportation recently - "there will be ample opportunity for public comment as the study goes forward" - makes a mockery of public comment by staving it off. Concerns should be addressed when they are raised.

Regional Transportation Plan

In many ways, the NJTPA Regional Transportation Plan is invaluable as an introduction to the transportation challenges in the region; to ISTEA planning, capital programming, and air quality mandates; and to the overall prospectus for transportation investments over the near and long term. It pays heed to the multimodal imperative set down by ISTEA and TEA-21.

However, the RTP is flawed in certain ways. Our biggest concern is that it is regularly rewritten to incorporate projects amended to the TIP that were never in the RTP - more evidence that the state agencies, not the MPO, seem to be driving the prioritization process. (We identified two such projects this year). RTP should be the guiding vision for the TIP, not vice-versa. In addition, it appears that this year's 2000-2002 TIP - the first adopted since 1998 - has been adopted without a corresponding amendment to the RTP.

Finally, the RTP is focused along eighteen "corridors." These corridors are drawn along existing highway alignments. We would urge the corridors to be reconsidered with a greater emphasis placed on transit connections, present and future.

Planning Mandate

In certain areas - its TCSP brownfields redevelopment project, or the TELUS software package - NJTPA is aggressively pursuing unique initiatives to complement existing planning in the region. We would like to see NJTPA expand its planning initiatives, to grow its profile beyond that of a capital programming agency. Acknowledging NJTPA's lack of land use authority, we nevertheless urge that it consider reaching out to municipalities and counties to help review development applications, circulation elements of master plans, and general land use issues to promote a more land use in the region that is complementary to the trip- and emissions-reduction objectives of the RTP. In places where alternative modes or strategies are not being considered by local or county authorities, NJTPA should attempt to work with those authorities to implement innovative transportation strategies.

Capital Programming Priorities

An accountable transportation spending policy would enable the public to examine the levels of investment in transportation system expansion, system management, and system preservation. Good planning dictates that our existing investments should be preserved before new infrastructure is built. But these issues are now nearly impossible to examine, let alone discuss intelligently, because NJDOT has instituted a new "system" of project categories.

In the past, TIP project categories following standard MPO form including expansion, management, and preservation. NJDOT has withheld these categories from its latest database, substituting them with unique and often arbitrary designations such as "strategic mobility" and "quality of life." For the sake of intelligent public discourse on transportation capital spending, NJTPA should ensure that the prior categories are re-instituted and incorporated into the TIP. It would also ensure comparability of data on a national level.

In addition, NJTPA, as a planning agency, should undertake to monitor NJDOT's performance in reaching its goals for within these categories. The NJDOT Capital Investment Strategy, though not the last word on performance goals, provides a good place to start. Rather than simply process projects, NJTPA should determine whether adequate investment is taking place to reach these goals - especially "state of good repair" - and publish its evaluation in a report. Tri-State Transportation Campaign already undertakes such evaluations, but it should not be alone in monitoring the State's overall investment profile to see whether public funds are being spent cost-effectively and consistent with mobility and sustainability goals.