Phil Murphy would like you to believe that he has solved NJ Transit’s annual budget burlesque with his new Corporate Transit Fee, but here’s the whole truth: While everyone applauds having a stable funding source for bus and rail operations after six years of fiscal shell games, it’s the governor’s job to make the lives of commuters better, and jacking up fares by 15% in June doesn’t exactly cohere with his grinning platitudes about affordability.
New Jersey commuters already are still dealing with substandard service, overcrowded buses, and now they are being treated to annual fare hikes for the foreseeable future – a trashy trifecta that Murphy suggests is justified by modest improvements in NJ Transit’s performance.
So just like that, Murphy has decided that a double-digit fare increase is the solution to a $106 million shortfall – as if there is no other option.
Airball. The revenue from the proposed fare hike amounts to 0.2% of the governor’s $56 billion budget, and once the Legislature starts to comb through it, we’re willing to bet that they can find the savings to rescue working-class families from this absurd burden and from the governor’s tone-deafness.
The state’s most powerful lawmaker, Nick Scutari, seems to agree – and fortunately, he’s not timid.
The Senate President’s endorsement of extending the corporate business tax surcharge – which expired in December -- led to Murphy adopting the new “fee” on the businesses making $10 million or more in profits to finance NJT operations.
That will generate $800 million annually for the agency -- a game-changer for an agency facing $900 million deficits the next two fiscal years, though Murphy now says it is only temporary.
The massive fare increase, however, is a bridge too far, Scutari told us Friday.
“I’m going to find it hard to support any fare increases, unless we have a broader proposal to solve New Jersey Transit’s deficit,” the Union County Democrat said. “We cannot expect commuters to bear this burden without a stable source of funding to secure its future as a safe and reliable transportation system.”
That’s his story, and we hope he sticks to it.
And as Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg asked at a recent board hearing: “How can they adopt this in April before they know what the state budget is going to be in June? They need to look at the whole budget and where this fits in.”
As lawmakers debate alternatives, they need to consider the consequences of Murphy’s fare hike. Peter Chen of NJ Policy Perspective suggests they can start by visiting Newark, a place “choked by car traffic -- figuratively and literally. The more cars we can take off the street, the more people who are riding transit instead, is a huge boom for the economy and for the lives of the people who live here. That’s exactly why we shouldn’t be raising fares.
“Transit riders are disproportionately lower income, and less able to pay these fares. If we’re talking about making the state more affordable, we should be thinking about getting more people to ride transit, not less.”
Or, as Jaqi Cohen of Tri-State Transportation Campaign put it, “This 15% fare hike isn’t just a number — it’s a barrier that will block access to transit for countless residents. Asking people to pay more for a problem they did not create is deeply unfair.”
As for Murphy suggesting that he has “in many respects fixed N.J. Transit through the customers’ lens,” here are two rail facts worth noting: NJ Transit met its on-time goals in only 3 of the last 36 months (Metro-North met its standard in all 36), and the frequency of breakdowns are among the highest in the country, with 455 mechanical failures in the last reported year -- which is six times higher than Metro-North and five times higher than the LIRR.
So we suspect he didn’t really look through the “customers’ lens,” and he probably hasn’t noticed that they already pay some of the highest fares in the country on two-zone commutes. They also ask why NJ Transit is moving into a $400 million corporate headquarters when their own station lacks a clean bathroom – which you might expect from a company that has left the Rider Advocate position vacant since October 2020.
Meanwhile, the governor’s projected budget shows a $334 million raid of NJT’s capital budget to cover its operations – six years after his Transportation Commissioner vowed to end this ludicrous annual practice – and he is filching another $70 million of clean energy funds to cover the agency’s utility costs.
Now comes this body-slam of riders – one that also includes annual 3% escalators starting next year -- and it is being peddled as the price of doing business. Nobody is buying it, not even Scutari. It’s time to rethink the fare hike.
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