Politicians Try to Run Parkway:

Politicians Try to Run Parkway

Why do we bother with Vollmer, HNTB, WSA, or indeed toll road staff professionals? They are clearly not needed. The politicians know how the toll roads should be run. In New Jersey Jan 7 the NJ Assembly Transp Committee voted the “Non Stop Parkway Bill” requiring the NJ Highway Authority (NJHA) manager of the Garden State Parkway to install highway-speed electronic toll (ET) lanes within 12 months of transponder transactions reaching 2/3 of the total. A companion bill in the state Senate (S2062) is being pushed by Sen Robert Martin (Rep).

That politicians feel it advantageous to be pushing the ET technology is an encouraging sign of its popularity with the public. But legislative mandates dictating the timing and circumstances of introducing ET create all kinds of risks of mess-ups and poor execution. At least one politician, Sen Ciesla head of the state senate transp committee recognizes this and may block the idiocy. He told a local newspaper that highway speed toll collection lanes are a “complex and costly” endeavor, and cited the challenge of safely merging the slow vehicles of cash-paying drivers with the high-speed lanes.

Now highway speed ET is the wave of the future, but you don’t get there by legislative timetables and mandates. Each toll plaza being replaced or rebuilt needs careful unhurried design. Almost every toll plaza has peculiarities about it – ramps nearby, curves ahead, sunrise/sunset glare issues, different traffic patterns – that demand careful, deliberate design, plaza by plaza. And reconstruction work under traffic should not be hurried either.

Or these politicians will have the blood of unnecessary wrecks on their hands.