costs

New Jersey Turnpike Authority is trying to slim its costs a little - in line with lower traffic. Traffic in the first ten months of the year is down 4.2% on the Turnpike and down 3.0% on the Parkway. The declines are attributed to the weak economy plus unusually wet weather in the summer - seen to depress trips to the NJ coast.  

Car travel currently costs about 24c/passenger-mile versus 87c on transit in 2007. Randall O'Toole of the Cato Institute gets these rough numbers as follows:

Roadway construction costs in the US fell by 17% between September and December of 2008 according to estimates by John Semmens of the Arizona Transportation Institute.

Virtually all components were down:

- asphalt 45% down

- steel 25% down

- gasoline down 64%

- lumber 8% down

- diesel down 50%

Massachusetts is a police state. Not in governance of course, but in pay - if the Massachusetts Turnpike's 2008 payroll is any measure. The Boston Herald put the data on their website this morning. We imported that into an Excel spreadsheet which generates some amazing data on police pay and police costs to the Turnpike. The 138 miles (222km)  of the Turnpike has 172 state troopers on payroll fulltime, paid in 2008 an average of $150,537 for the year.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is getting negative local press for the number of its workers that earn more than $100k/year, while the Turnpike faces financial difficulty. The Boston Herald having obtained the payroll under freedom of information report that 43 Turnpike employees grossed over$100k.

A Reason Foundation report on the Pennsylvania Turnpike by Robert Poole (Bob) and myself (Peter Samuel) has got some attention. Bob did all the work and I got all the controversy!