I tried to park there to catch the bus mid-day today, and there were no docks available.

This is what's so interesting! It was done sneakily during the height of the pandemic. If you advertised to NJ that you wanted to spend $24B widening highways across NJ so were raising tolls by 50%, they would be mad. But do it without publicity, with EZ-Pass & remote work hiding the true amount?

You have this flipped. Wonks/economists would see this as a tax. The Turnpike raised prices due to pricing power from its monopoly, not due to costs. The tolls were raised in 2020 to fund a crazy $24B statewide highway widening capital plan.

If it's possible NJ should definitely do this. I have a hypothesis that east-west traffic is more aggressive and dangerous because of the lack of tolls. It probably also over encourages truck warehouses along those routes.

Conceptually yes for sure. But people think of them as user fees. One of the justifications for widening ignoring lack of effectiveness is they are using toll money.

On a relative basis, for statewide issues it does not register. Consider housing costs, taxes, fix NJT, electricity etc. Its not a top kitchen table issue.

The corporate transit fee and Turnpike are pretty good ways to fund NJT. No one complains about the Turnpike tolls for some reason which is weird given what happened with CP. People complain about the CTF, but corporations can't escape it based on location, so it does not incentivize leaving NJ.

Yes like that. Jersey City has so many residential streets that have travel lanes that are highway-lane-wide, 15-17ft wide, which lead to speeding. Unfortunately, Jersey City seems to have stopped painting these shoulder bike lanes everywhere, possibly due to the refrain "paint is not protection".

It's cool because no buffer is needed, and the energy chips for having a parking fight can be spent elsewhere. From Streetfilms excellent overview of North Brooklyn's formidable Berry Lane Open Street: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apx-...

If they rewarded teachers based on merit that would be one thing. But everything I've ever seen of it is it is treated as an employment program controlled by various fiefs. And JCEA has opposed higher salaries for new teachers and for school aides/paras where the dollars are needed more.

This is probably a naive way of thinking about things but if the address is 100 Bay St and they're already proposing to go to 90 stories – they don't try to just go for 100? Is per unit construction cost worse above 90?

When they got the bonus year or two of adjust aid they did spend some on new roofs and such. But yes most of the money goes to median teacher salary that is far above comparable districts. JCEA-supported former BOE president Lyons estimated 500K over a career than the actual going rate.

The Downtown electorate is informed and setting a reasonable bar. Whatever the issue – streets, transit, housing, parks, education, reform – I don't know that you can never be involved in anything local, just show up last minute and say some good sounding things, and expect to do really well.

But have you considered freedom? 🙃

It's what the Turnpike would do!

Yeah tap-off would make it pretty difficult to evade on fares. Refuse to tap-on at your peril.

Actually national data shows the same trend. Bus ridership is down not just year-over-year (blue) but also down relative to rail ridership (green).