FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 12, 2008

Contact:
Tim Evans, Research Director, (609)393-0008, ext. 103 or
Rick Sinding, Senior Communications Consultant,
(609) 529-2885

New Jersey residents spend more time getting to and from work than their counterparts in 48 of the 50 states — but the state could reduce the stress and frustration of commuting, and advance several important public policy goals, by employing strategies to link job sites with public transportation, according to a research report released today by New Jersey Future.

The report — “Getting to Work: Reconnecting Jobs With Transit,” by New Jersey Future Research Director Tim Evans — analyzed the distribution of employment in New Jersey since 1980, and found that as jobs shifted from the cities to the suburbs, commute times rose by more than 20 percent. “The decentralization of employment has aggravated traffic by scattering commute destinations in all directions, inhibiting transit use and forcing more and more commuters to drive alone to work,” Evans explained.

“Most of the newer job centers are not accessible by public transportation,” Evans continued, “meaning that each of their workers represents an additional car on the road, adding to congestion. Worse, some of the older job centers that do have good transit access have been losing jobs, reducing the number of people who have the option of commuting by means other than their car.”

New Jersey Future Executive Director Peter Kasabach added that the shift of jobs from cities to suburbs has had other adverse social, economic and environmental impacts. “This ‘job sprawl’ is contributing to the plight of older urban centers by depriving them of jobs that could help their residents break the cycle of poverty and unemployment,” Kasabach said. “And it is undermining recently articulated state policy goals regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Every new job created in a car-dependent office park means one more car on the road, emitting more CO2, and one less potential transit commuter or walker.”

Centralizing employment — concentrating jobs in just a few large employment centers — would allow New Jersey to take advantage of its extensive public transportation system, Kasabach noted. “When many people are converging on the same place for their jobs, it becomes feasible for them to share the ride,” he explained. “In other words, concentrated employment creates the conditions that allow public transportation to succeed.”

The New Jersey Future report concluded that promoting job growth in places where people can live within walking distance, or to which they can ride public transportation, has the potential to diminish solo car commuting, thereby reducing congestion, per-capita energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Recentralizing employment around transit could also serve as a powerful urban revitalization tool, providing employment opportunities in distressed municipalities where they are most needed. And it would shore up these municipalities’ commercial tax bases, generating revenues that could be used to improve local services, particularly schools.

The report offered several recommendations aimed at reconnecting jobs with public transportation, including:

• Provide incentives for development and/or redevelopment around transit stations by assisting with environmental cleanup of nearby properties, prioritizing infrastructure investments in targeted transit hubs, addressing concerns about public safety and service quality in municipalities experiencing socioeconomic distress, and providing staff resources and financial aid to encourage municipalities to change their zoning to accommodate station-area development.
  
• Reorient the state’s business recruitment programs by adopting an explicit goal of encouraging large employers to locate near transit stations.
  
• Level the playing field between transit and driving by eliminating the hidden subsidies and incentives (such as the nation’s third-lowest gasoline tax) for automobile use while transit fares steadily increase.
  
• Make the reduction of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) — and the expansion of transit ridership — explicit goals of state efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.