New Jersey

Illinois State Toll Highway Administration (ISTHA locally known as the Illinois Tollway) announce the completion of what they call their systemwide Rebuild and Widen. They say Dec 19 will mark the opening of the last components of a huge $3 billion project in which they reconstructed and rehabilitated and widened some 120 miles (193km) of their 286 mile (460km) network of Chicago area tollroads.

The media have been calling her Tammy the Turnpike Turkey. She made the Jersey City/Liberty Park Exit 14B toll plaza of the New Jersey Turnpike her home for months through noon today, defying several attempts over a couple of weeks by Turnpike staff and state wildlife people to move her out.

A close political race for state governor in New Jersey, and accusations that incumbent Gov Jon Corzine was reviving his 2006 plan for monetization of the Turnpike produced a commitment to freeze tolls during his next term. "No toll increases, no leasing of the turnpike...Off the table. Not happening, period." That's how Gov Corzine spoke today after tolls became a furore that he judged threatened his re-election.

A lot of the campaigning for the next governor in New Jersey is about who will get the most windmills erected and taxes contained and jobs saved, but incumbent Gov Jon Corzine is making a major pitch for enhancing tollroad capacity, showing up at two big groundbreakings in recent days, playing for the cameras.

July 2 Corzine and leading officials were at Hightstown for ceremonies to celebrate a start on widening the NJ Turnpike Exits 6 to 9.

New Jersey Turnpike Authority says work was finished on the new Driscoll Bridge on the Garden State Parkway with all 15 lanes open from May 20 2009. The bridge at Milepost 126 just south of the interchange with the New Jersey Turnpike consists of two heavily rebuild and rehabilitated spans and a third new span side by side over the  Raritan River in Perth Amboy, 42km (26 miles) southwest of Central Park in New York City.

Margate Bridge Company in Margate NJ raised its tolls today. Frequent users who buy a proximity card with credits for 100 car trips will now pay $1.00 a trip compared to 80c previously, and cash payers will fork over $1.50 compared to $1.00 before. An official statement (see in full at end) cites high costs of maintenance of the near 80 year old bridge as rationale for the toll increases.

Cape May County New Jersey took over the Beesley's Point Bridge today (2008-12-30) paying a token one dollar in a transaction to acquire title to the private toll bridge which has been closed to traffic since June 23 2004. As part of the transaction the bridge company repaid a $900k loan from the NJDOT from 1997.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has told the Newark Star Ledger newspaper he has paid a former Turnpike Authority and state Treasury accountant Rocco Riccio $362,500 in a legal settlement. Riccio the brother-in-law of Corzine's then girlfriend Carla Katz is reported to have gained a job at the Turnpike with the Governor's help.

The board of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority voted unanimously today to raise tolls around 40% immediately and another 50% in 2012. A similar 50% toll hike now was voted today by the South Jersey Transportation Authority, operator of the Atlantic City Expressway.

An opinion poll suggests about 58% opposition versus 17% support - with 25% no opinion - for the idea of having private operators run new toll lanes they'd built on the New Jersey Turnpike. The question was framed in terms of the private lanes being higher priced than the existing lanes.

This in a Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll the results of which were published in the Asbury Park Press newspaper.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) - of which the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel toll authority is a division - is reversing its stance defending free toll transponders (and transit passes) for current and former board members. They announced May 29 that they would, after all, comply with state Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo's May 25 demand that the program be discontinued immediately.

James McGreevey was a hard charging, order screaming governor who, good or bad, had a lasting impact on American tollroads during his short term in office Jan 2002 to Nov 2004. He came to office promising to consolidate the state's three tollroads into one super-efficient entity.

A leading New Jersey legislator Senator Ray Lesniak says he's pushing a plan to boost toll revenues in the state to support what he calls "absolutely necessary" transport improvements. The plan involves two 50% hikes in tolls, one immediately and the other in five years time.

Governor Corzine has acknowledged he isn't getting political support for his big tollroads monetization plan that he put out early this year. And his supporters are saying only a much scaled down version of the plan is possible together with abandonment of the elaborate set of political cutouts Corzine proposed to limit backsliding - what some have characterized as a Rube Goldberg legal contraption.

After two key supporters in the legislature said they wouldn't support a monetization bill with tolling the presently free NJ440, Gov Jon Corzine has caved on the proposal. At a meeting Feb 10 in Middlesex County after hearing criticism the governor said: "Since it's not central to the plan, I don't think we'll be moving forward on that..."

New Jersey Republican legislative leaders have raised an interesting constitutional challenge to Governor Cozine's tollroad monetization scheme. Senate GOP leader Tom Kean and assembly leader Alex DeCroce say it violates a constitutional bar on granting special privileges.

Under Governor Corzine's draft legislation to monetize New Jersey's tollroads, the New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway, the Atlantic City Expressway and NJ440 would be transferred to a New Jersey Turnpike Authority reconstituted as New Jersey Capital Solutions Corporation (NJCSC).

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has contributed $500k of his personal funds to set up a new group called Save our State NJ intended to campaign for his tollroads monetization plan, local press reported today. The group is being run by Jennifer Godoski, 30, who resigned from a $109k/yr job as chief of staff at NJDOT recently to take on the role of lobbyist and campaigner.

New Jersey senate president Richard J Codey is proposing frequent driver discounts as a way of easing the pain of toll increases proposed by Gov Corzine. He's suggesting a 20% discount for tolls with monthly bills of over $200 and smaller discounts of 15, 10 and 5 percent for smaller bills. The discounts would be applied to E-ZPass accounts. About 60% of tolls in the state are taken by E-ZPass.

Governor Jon Corzine is not close to winning public support for his radical public toll concession plan, according to a new opinion poll. The poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind opinion polling outfit was conducted by telephone from Jan 14 thru 21 using a random sample of 927 registered voters.  The poll has a sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.