You folks there elected this boob, twice.
Christie is the best we could hope for in a governor here in the northeast; he held out on this until other taxes would be cut (a position he consistently held), but he knows that the roads and bridges are literally falling apart. I’m not happy with the increase, but I’m not happy re-aligning my wheels every few months either. The problem became impossible to ignore as more and more major roadways were seeing traffic issues due to emergency repairs (basically patches). He also had to deal with the flight of wealth from the state that was mirroring the flight of companies and jobs; the state is descending into a morass of Welfarians and imported foreigners filling the void left by people that matter (taxpayers/makers).
In any case, it removed one of the last remaining good things about NJ (our gasoline taxes had been among the lowest in the country) and will just push up the cost of living here even more.